#i'm not putting in paragraph breaks deal with it

[pearlcigs]

ignore the fact I’m sending this right after u posted… I got notifs on for u!!!

I lowkey do not remember if Joel got got in this universe.. but Ellie texts Joel asking for advice bcz she rlly loves reader and Joel helps her draft up a paragraph (bonus points if she tries her hardest to use good grammar) and a date :3

great work guys im gonna start putting you to work more often and i hate to break it to u guys but this is the final part 🙁 yes yes so sad BUT it was fun i hope... but like theres not much left to do w it so unless someone sends like a REALLLLYYY good idea this is it i fear hope u guys enjoy

(this is ellies pov again btw)

⋆ texts with dealer!ellie — tlou discord server

the air was stuffy, blowing into your face and through your hair when you open the door. you didn't bother putting on anything decent, residing in your lounge clothes without caring for ellie's opinion. you saw her, looking down at her phone and leaning against the door of her car with a bouquet of flowers in her hand. she looks up as she hears the noise, standing up straighter and slipping her phone into her pocket. she smiles half-heartedly and it almost makes you swoon.

you walk down the path way until you reach ellie, the wind blowing the scent of her to seep into you entirely. it smells so nostalgic. "ellie." you mutter in a hushed tone. she hands out the bouquet to you, the red roses looking a little smushed and on their way out. you examined them, seeing the price tag on the cellophane encasing the flowers. they were on clearance. "5 bucks for half rotted flowers? wow, you must be really sorry." the sarcasm in your voice made ellie's smile falter. "this was all they had left." she admits, her voice sounding quieter than yours, if that was even possible.

she sounds genuine, you think, and seeing the smile fall from her face does make your heart ache. were you really feeling pitiful for her? "i got— there's other stuff too." she stammers nervously, you'd never seen her like this before. so bashful, her shoulders slumped. so different to the usual loud and confident ellie you know, or knew. "half rotted chocolate next?" you keep up with the sarcasm, the hurt burrowed in your heart taking priority over your pity. "no." she huffs out a small laugh, but it's more nervous and awkward than anything. she feels insecure that you still haven't accepted the flowers yet.

"it's just some stuff you said you liked. candy, that chapstick you talked about, those cds you were looking everywhere for." she says it like it's no big deal, like your heart didn't drop to your stomach at her remembrance of the offhanded things you said while smoking. "really?" you can't believe it, or rather, you don't want to believe it. cause then you would be wrong about ellie, everything you thought she was. "what? you don't believe me?" she scoffs and her shy demeanor vanishes slightly, anger flowing through her. you thought that low of her? for you to think she was lying straight to your face?

"it was silent after her tiny outburst. she clears her throat, she didn't mean that. "yes, really..." she corrects herself. she tries again, holding the flowers out further to you, gesturing for you to take them. "this doesn't change anything." you couldn't look at her as you took the flowers from her finally. "it does." she whispers, watching as you brought the bouquet up to your face to smell the roses. "maybe." you feed into it, going along with what was happening. "i'm crazy about you. you do crazy shit to my head." ellie admits. "

it was silent after her tiny outburst. she clears her throat, she didn't mean that. "yes, really..." she corrects herself. she tries again, holding the flowers out further to you, gesturing for you to take them. "this doesn't change anything." you couldn't look at her as you took the flowers from her finally. "it does." she whispers, watching as you brought the bouquet up to your face to smell the roses. "maybe." you feed into it, going along with what was happening. "i'm crazy about you. you do crazy shit to my head." ellie admits.

"i want to forgive you." you follow her honesty, admitting your own feelings. "then forgive me." she pleads, hands finding their way to your waist. "i'm scared." it was the truth, she'd hurt you once who was to say she wouldn't do it again? "then we can be scared together." she swallows nervously, taking in your features, your reaction to her words. you felt better, as sick as it was. knowing she was scared too made it somehow feel less scary. she would probably hurt you again, maybe next tuesday, but like she said. how is she supposed to grow if you don't give her a chance.

tags : @kokoch4nel @ellies1luvr @frillydolle @macaroni676 @lilibach @prettyyyy-girl @anonymous-user240 @liizzygrant @yourl0caltrash @cattjull @liztreez @luvcalii @lexxvy @ifiwereabug @aria7silver @starpix @liasxeatt @satorix @wishesofficial @polarhues @usuck @eclipcee8 @nosferatuv @clouded-whispers @dykesofcydonia @rhyrhy @witzs @fawnedolly @confiaenanaa @elliecoochieeater @minnixiii @n0t-elliewilliams @yaegerphobic . @abbysgolf-club

dealer!ellie masterlist

[the-universal-sun]

in NEED of some sad little stan with ford comforting him.. maybe him telling ford about his past being homeless and regressing from talking about the memories

Thank you for the request and very sorry it took so long to get to it, I hope you're still here to read it! I enjoyed writing it very much, even if Stan doesn't regress until about halfway down. I do have some drabbles in the works that are lil' stan all the way through though...Enough about that, thank you again for the request, I hope it lives up to your expectations! I hope you all enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed writing it! It was a good prompt and I thank you again, Anon, for the ask! Sorry if the tone seems to flip flop around, I took a long break to finish up some chores when writing this.

As always, I'm open to helpful comments and advice, please enjoy!

TW: Stan talks a little about his time in the back of a trunk, but it's essentially just Stan describing his feelings and dropping when telling Ford. If you want to void that paragraph, it starts at "It was about the time I spent in Mexico" and ends at "get his words out without blubbering. "

-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-_-

It was a rough night for Stan. There was a storm going on out on the water and the violent rocking of the Stan O' War made him stumble and burn his tongue on the still hot stew was made, then he just couldn't find the right position to sleep in, his back hurting on his side, his front, when he was laying back on his orthopedic pillow, nothing was right. And when he did finally manage to get to sleep, nightmares and memories he wishes stayed forgotten clawed at his mind all night, finally jerking him awake too early in the morning for anyone to function. Anyone but Ford, that is, who seemed well rested and eager to start the day. Stan swears his brother was whistling a tune while he made coffee he was just that damn chipper. Stan wasn't. He wanted to sleep, but he knows even if he could, nightmares would find their way back in, and he cannot deal with those right now, not with how close he was to dropping and regressing-which he honestly wasn't in the mood for right now, his body and mind to anxious and exhausted to focus on that allure. Instead, he just grunted when Ford asked him about how he slept. And he only gave short one word answers throughout the day, his mood souring further and further as the humid sun beat down on them. He thought he was doing well in hiding it from Ford until, around late afternoon, his brother turns to him, arms crossed and an expression that was identical to their mother's when she got annoyed with their attitudes, and demanded an explanation.

"Stanley, what is the matter with you today? You've been crochety and grumpy all day, and it's starting to get on my nerves." He stands there, waiting for Stan to respond. Jesus, can't Stan have a bad day without it being turned into a big deal? He heaves a sigh after a few moments, not wanting to get into an argument with the way he's feeling.

" 'S nothing, Stanford, just had a rough time getting to sleep, s'all. Nothing for you to worry about." He shrugs, trying to keep it casual and not alert his brother to just why he had a hard time sleeping. Stan hopes he'll drop and they can go back to setting up fishing lines. Stan doesn't think he can keep a good grip on his pole today, so he's got the rail grip out for it. He just wants to sit back and relax and not think about bad dreams and phantom body aches.

"Hard time sleeping? Was it the storm, Stanley? It was pretty rough last night, but it ended around 2 am and I've seen you sleep through rougher. Though I do recall hearing you complain and grumble about your back periodically throughout the night..." Stan, knowing his brother will reach some sort of conclusion on his own, whether accurate or not, just sighs again and starts putting up their fishing gear. Once Stanford got started, it took a while for him to finish, and once he comes to his conclusion, whatever it is, he's going to insist Stan go and get some rest or, god forbid, talk about it. Yeesh, just thinking about it made his whole body cringe. He's finished packing everything up and is halfway to the door back inside before Ford pipes up with his conclusion as to what Stan's problem was.

"You had a nightmare! Probably of a memory that just came back to you! Why didn't I see it before! You're always in a dour mood when you have a memory come to you in this form, it should've been my first thought, really! I was too absorbed in writing down my latest findings...that...I..." Ford stops, wincing at the sight of Stanley's blank stare from the doorway, eyebrow raised. Stan only rolls his eyes up, earning another wince, before he gestures to the open door. If they're going to have an emotional talk, Stan would rather do it in air conditioning. He leaves the box of fishing gear by the door and heads to their room, he'll need the comfort of his teddy bear if Ford's going to make him talk about his nightmare. And trust him, Ford will make him talk, probably by sheer annoyance and pestering. He grabs his Teddy and heads to the kitchen, bypassing Ford loitering in the door way and ignoring the stare aimed at him. He doesn't need to feel like he's going to regress to have Poindexter, the stuffed toy has been a comfort for him since he was 19, and it's still one now, no matter his headspace. He settles in the kitchen, grabbing a diet Pitt Cola, more for something to do with his hands and mouth than desire to drink it. He adverts his eyes when Stanford settles down in front of him, staring silently.

"Stanley, you know we need to talk about this, if it was a memory, it needs to go in one of your memory books, just in case you have a lapse. You also need to talk about it for your own mental health, you know what Mabel says, bottling your emotions will only lead to explosions." Stan loves his great-niece, he truly does, but she was all on abord with his brother when he got into his "caring about peoples (Stanley's) emotions and helping them with their mental health." phase, which is seeming less like a phase every day.

"Yeah I had a nightmare, it was about an incident during a drifter days. It was sucky and I hated it, and I'll write it down in the Bad Memory journal later. There, we talked about it, I'll go rest now. We done?" Stan starts to get up from the small table.

"No we are not done! You actually have to talk about it, Stanley, share the details of your nightmare with me. And I know you won't write it down! So we are going to sit here and you are going to talk. And trust me, I can play the waiting game. I can play it all day." Dang it, Ford's stern about this, and Stan knows he means it, waiting for him to talk. He's done it before, they sat there from sun rise to almost sun set before Stan gave in and talked. He sighs, cracking open the soda and setting his bear next to him at the table, talking more to it than to Ford, not wanting to see the disappointment in his eyes. He takes a while to gather his thoughts, to think about the best way to get through this. He grabs his teddy with his free hand, just to hold and pet so his nerves can calm down.

"It was about the time I spent in Mexico, there was an-uh-incident and," Stan blows some air out of his mouth, wondering why it was so hard to talk about this particular memory with Ford. "I had to chew my way out of a trunk." He still refuses to look at him, staring down at Poindexter, his worn but well loved Teddy who's been with him through everything. Stan's amazed he's never lost the poor thing, with how many times he's been on the run and in jail-thankfully they keep the stuff you had when you went in and kept your car impounded if you were in for less than 3 years, so no one was able to throw him away. He keeps his grip on Poindexter tight as he talks about his nightmare, how terrified he felt and how he truly believed, for the first time in his life, he was going to die. He recounts the experience, and not without a few barbs and poor tasting jokes, going from holding Poindexter to hugging him tightly, needing his comfort. Stan can feel his headspace creeping up on him, already so close to dropping and getting even closer to it the more he talks. He doesn't even realize he's started rocking until he knocks into the table, startling him into silence until Stanford quietly urges for him to continue talking about his nightmare, his brother writing down his words in a memory journal. Stan starts slipping further and further as he gets to the part where had to chew through the harsh metal of a car trunk, he can feel the tears sting his eyes, but he can't worry about them, too focused on being able to get his words out without blubbering.

He finishes telling Stanford about his nightmare, was it really a nightmare if it was a memory of his, with a joke about his dentures. Stan doesn't know if it didn't land because of the situation or because it was actually bad, he's still refusing to look at Ford, burying his face in Poindexter's fur, feeling so close to dropping, he's teetering over the edge, and so upset about his nightmare. He wishes he never remembered that situation, he could've gone the rest of his life clueless and he would have preferred that. He flinches when he hears Ford get up and sit next to him, is he going to tell Stan what a disappointment he was for getting mixed up in such a bad crowd? Will he sigh and say he should've taken better care of himself? Stan doesn't know, and he's scared to find out.

"Oh, Lee," Ford sighs next to him, a six-fingered hand curling through the strands at the back of Stan's neck, his gentle touches breaking away the last of the dam holding back his tears and pushing him over that edge. He curls into Sixer, clutching his sweater and sobbing, sobbing over how scared he was, how scared he still is, the nightmare's affects lingering throughout the day. He never wants to think about that moment ever again. Stan's finding it hard to breathe his how hard he's crying, coughing harshly every couple of minutes. His brother slaps his back to dislodge his coughs, rocking Stan's body with his own. He sniffles, wiping his face on Sixer's chest, and wraps his arms around him, making their rocking go faster. Stan likes it when his brother rocks him, it's better than his rocking, it calms him down way faster, too. They just rock together for what feels like eternity, he's stopped crying at some point, but he still clutches Sixer, enjoying the touch and the sensations, the nice a comfy warmth he brings. His brother always knows how to chase away his scary feelings and thoughts, he really loves Ford.

Stan panics when he feels Ford pull away, clutching at his sweater and whining, he's so scared he's going to leave him again, Stan doesn't want to be alone, he wants his big brother to hold him and rock him!

"Lee, it's alright, I'm just getting a warm cloth to wipe your face, alright?" Stan just blinks at Ford, not really understanding what he said. He just stands when his twin stands, he doesn't want to be alone, he has to follow Sixer. Stan holds his hand as tight as he can and follows Ford to the bathroom, he cries when the lights get turned on, they hurt his eyes, they're too bright! He flicks them off, rubbing his eyes, they sting and burn even more now. Stan just wants to go and get out of these itchy clothes and cuddle Poindexter, but Ford's got to be in the bathroom for some reason, which means Stan does too, even though he doesn't have to go potty now. He flinches when the cloth touches his face, it's got but it does feel good, Stan hums and lets his brother pat his face with it, lightly rocking on his feet and clutching his stuffy to his chest.

"There we are, the hot water might help soothe some of the irritation in your eyes from crying, but if your eyes start to swell, I've got an ice pack in the freezer if you're amenable to that." Stan doesn't know what Sixer's talking about, his head's too fuzzy to pay attention to all the details and the big words his brother's using. He hums again as Ford smooths his hair back, he loves it when his hair's played with, it makes his body feel just like jelly-or is it jam that jiggles and falls down? Stan doesn't know, but he smiles at Sixer, he's still rocking away, but it feels nice to do, it's a nice rocking, a happy rocking, not a bad and tight tummy rocking. His brother looks, now that his glasses are back on, sad and all frowny, and Stan doesn't like that, so he lets Poindexter hug him, that's sure to cheer him up. Poindexter's hugs always cheer Stan up, why wouldn't they work on Ford.

"A-ah, thank you, Lee and Poindexter, for the hug. I appreciate it very-um very much." Ford rubs the back on his neck, giving the toy a hand armed hug and hesitant tap on it's "back", still unsure about hugging a stuffed animal.

His brother always looks so awkward when he hugs his stuffies, but, and Stan gives him a big hug, too, he looks happier than before, so Stan was right, as always, his friends hugs cheered up Sixer! His brother is the one grabbing his hand this time, walking them to the bedroom, Stan swinging their joined hands together between them for the short walk. "Lee, how about you go pick out some comfortable clothes while I fix the bed up. I'll help you get dressed when you've got them picked out, yes?" Stan understood enough of that to know that Sixer wants him to get some jammies out, he already knows which ones he's going to pick, his absolute favorite pair. He nods and gives a little salute, giggling when Ford tickles his chin, moving his face to escape the tickling but the hand keeps following him until he pushes it away, wanting to get changed. He watched his brother go to his bed, staring at it for some reason, before he goes to his dresser and pulls out his Special Jammy Drawer, the words capitalized to show how special and important this drawer is; it had all his fun and comfy pajamas and socks. Stan doesn't even need to look for his jammies, his favorite pair is right on top. It's a pair of fuzzy brown footies and it has a hood, but even better than the hood is the ears and tail on it, they look like a bears! Now he matches with Poindexter when he's got them on, that's why they're his favorite! Sixer always gets a kick out of it when he roars and rolls around on these, too.

"Have you got your clothes out yet, Lee? I've got the bed all fixed up with your special blankets and special pillows on it. I've even laid out a heating pad, it should be warm enough to feel once you've gotten dressed." Oh boy, Stan's special blankies are his favorites, and he gets a heating pad! He's got an achy back, so he sometimes needs a heating pad if it gets real bad, his special pillows are for his back and neck, too-Sixer likes to say something about "proper support" but Stan just likes how it makes his body feel like he's a giant laying on hills. But his blankets he can't rest without. One is a giant and heavy blankie with dinos on it, but the other is his tip top absolute favorite. It's a big and warm quilt with so many different patches and patterns-Stan added some teddy bears to it himself and they only made it look better-and some nice old lady gave it to him when he was really cold at a shelter once, it was just before he got Poindexter, which means it's also been with him forever and ever and he doesn't know what he'd do without it.

Stan's snapped out of his thought when his brother takes Poindexter out of his arms, Stan cries out and tries to follow him but calms down when Sixer puts him on the bed, right, he needs to get dressed and can't hold his friend to do that. "Steady now, Lee. Hold on to me." Ford always helps him get dressed, scared he'll fall and hurt himself, it's only ever happened one (or thrice or five times), but Stan likes it, it gives him a warm gooey feeling in his chest and tummy, he likes that his big brother wants to take care of him and soothe his ouchies when he gets hurt from falling. "Step in one leg at a time, Lee, we don't want to fall. Left leg in, perfect. Right leg now." Ford's voice is soft, so are his movements, he gently holds and guides Stan, helping him step in the legs of his jammies and threading his hand through the sleeves, zipping him up almost all the way but not to the top, Stan doesn't like things zipped up or buttoned up all the way, it makes it hard to swallow. "There we go," His hood is flipped up, the bear ears sticking out, "one Big Bear ready to lay down and rest easy." Stan does a little "roar" and makes claws with his hands, but he doesn't think it scares Sixer, his brother just laughs and rubs his head, which makes him pout before a tummy poke brings out his ticklish giggles.

"Alright, lets get tucked in to bed now. Ah-" Ford tuts at Stans returning pout, tapping his lips to usher it away, "You don't have to sleep, Lee, but I just want you to lay down in the quiet, okay?" Stan can do laying down, maybe not quiet, but he can 100% lay down in a comfy bed surrounded by Sixer and Poindexter and his blankies. "Perfect, let's get your glasses...alright, let's get you settled, Lee." As Ford tucks him and Poindexter in, Stan wonders if Ford will get in with him if he asked. Is Ford going to stay with Stan? The thought of Ford leaving makes him whimper, clutching his brother's sleeve. He can't leave, Stan needs him here with him! To protect him from any scary dreams or memories or monsters!

"Lee!? What is it what's wrong?" Ford panics, thinking something, another memory perhaps, caused Stanley's panic. His face crumples when all he gets his a whispered and broken "stay" and teary whines, did Stanley think he would leave? After what his memory was about? He gets on his knees, the joints cracking, before he speaks:

"Oh, Lee, I'm not going to leave you. I'm going to stay right here by your side, I always will be by your side, for the rest of our lives. So please, don't cry, I'm not going anywhere." He rests his forehead against Stanley's, one hand holding his, the other grabbing the pacifier he laid on the side table, bringing it up to his brother's mouth-which immediately latched on and began to chew, the repetitive movement obviously soothing, his body goes lax soon after.

Sixer said he'd stay, he always says that and he always stays, so Stan settles back down, chewing on his pacifier and hugging Poindexter, and lets his brother finish tucking him in, the blankets tights around him, the pressure is soothing. He keeps his head turned to face his brother, needing to see him, to make sure he's really going to stay, snuffling when his hair gets soothed back, the hand resting on the top on his head. Stan doesn't feel tired, not sleepy tired at least, but it feels nice to let his body relax against his bed and brother, just letting himself float in his fuzzy headed feelings, not really thinking of anything, just existing.

It felt nice.

[lxnarphase]

do you have any advice for new writers who want to start posting on tumblr?

Oh man, I'm gonna give you a list of things I wish I could've told myself when I first started posting.

Some Basic Tips:

Don't be scared to post! You'll never see growth in your followers, mutuals, and even your writing if you don't post!

Be open to asking others for help or advice if you struggle with writing. I sometimes ask some of my mutuals for help or read fanfiction to see how others write a scene. Then, I take the knowledge and write it in my own way. For example, I do well with writing dialogue but find myself always struggling with how to start the story.

Don't be afraid to post about non-writing things, too! Remember, you deserve to have fun on your account, so post what you want. You aren't a machine. You are a person!

The number of notes you get doesn't determine your worth or skill in writing. In my opinion, Tumblr has shifted a bit, making it harder for smaller writers to get likes, reblogs, or comments on their works.

But at the end of the day, in order to enjoy being a writing blog on Tumblr, you have to enjoy what you are writing and posting. Do not feel like you have to force yourself to write just for the numbers, let it happen naturally. Things will start out slow at first, as all things do, but you'll get to a point where you can barely keep up with things.

Post and Blog Formatting + Style:

Formatting is really important! Break up paragraphs, ask a friend to be a beta reader, and for longer works, go back and proofread if you have the time! It's okay if you have minor mistakes, though. I tend to miss things in my writing, and when I return a week later, I just fix them. No big deal!

Nowadays, aesthetics is HUGE for fanfiction posts and your account. Channel your creativity and style! Make your blog super pretty in your own way! It can be pink and cutesy, black and edgy, simple and clean, or colorful and cluttered! Don't have a blank blog!

PUT YOUR AGE CLEARLY SOMEWHERE! In your bio, pinned post, SOMEWHERE IT IS EASY TO SEE. I have had writing accounts follow me but no age, so I don't feel comfortable engaging with them.

You can take inspiration from other accounts (don't outright copy, though) on how they format their fanfictions. You will probably notice a lot of accounts have headers, dividers, or colored text. You can do that too, as it can catch the readers attention.

I get headers from doujins and mangas I read, websites such as Pinterest are good for cute ones, and Twitter is your go-to for more NSFW headers.

Create a tagging system to make navigating your blog easier, and have a pinned post with links to your rules/byf/masterlist/etc.

Try to put warnings in your writing. A lot of people have filters on to avoid the types of content they don't want to see, but there are the occasional people who don't put warnings in the writing post itself. It could be a simple tag or a list of themes at the beginning of the post.

An example would be a post with the tag #dubcon #tw dubcon OR putting "cw: dubcon" in the post itself before the writing itself.

This is a tag vs. in the actual post

Tagging and Reblogs

Speaking of tags, USE THE TAGGING SYSTEM! If you don't tag your post with popular fanfiction tags, it will be hard for people to find you.

Only the first twenty tags will show up in Tumblr search, including your own blog. Reblogs will not show up in tracked tags or searches.

However, don't feel bad for reblogging your own works again. Do it as many times as you want. You created something and should feel proud of it! I still reblog things from January just because.

Making Mutuals

Don't be afraid to engage with other accounts. That's how you make friends on here! But here's something important:

Be genuine. Make mutuals because you enjoy each other's work, AND both have fun talking with each other! If someone doesn't add you back as a mutual, that is okay; don't feel like they have something against you! Making mutuals shouldn't be your only goal when posting on Tumblr. Otherwise, you might tire yourself out mentally. It took me a while to make mutuals on here, but I'm glad it did it naturally instead of trying to force it.

Asks and Anons

Once you build a following, you will get the most wonderful, loving, and supportive anons in your inbox! Cherish them, respond to them, and have fun with them! Because there is a very high chance, you will also get assholes in your inbox.

I say this from the bottom of my heart but do NOT give hateful people your attention because that is what they thrive on. I still get them, but when I tell you I am at so much peace, I block and delete the messages and carry on.

If a certain message bothers me for a bit, then I just take a little break, talk to some friends about what happened, and do what helps me calm down so I don't act rashly. Don't be afraid to turn off anonymous messages for a while. This is YOUR blog, not theirs.

Don't feel pressured to answer every ask or fulfill every request. Take your time because that can burn you out! I love socializing so much, but sometimes I just pull a blank on how to respond to my asks. I always ensure my mutuals and followers know that I'm not ignoring them and just tend to go blank-brained with some asks, OR I save some of them to look at when I'm sad!

Overall, just start and DO IT FOR YOURSELF.

That's the best advice for when you want to make anything. You just have to start posting and learning and improving as you go on. Hopefully, this will sort of help. I know it's not the best list of advice, but it's just some things I would tell myself back when I first started.

If you have any other questions, I can try my best to answer them!

[toskarin]

how did you get started making music, tools-wise?

I've talked about this a bit before and I don't necessarily recommend doing this, so skip the following two paragraphs and go right to the one under the break if you actually want the method I recommend

I lied to a girl I liked from my school and told her that, because I could play guitar I could also play piano, so I could teach her to play piano. both of these statements were lies.

I had to panic and learn both guitar and piano one week ahead of the lessons I was giving her as an excuse to hang out. so I self-taught in a haze of panic and "maybe she'll like me" (she did not) (but she kind of did) (but she was bicurious) (but she was wishy-washy on if she wanted to get together and her parents didn't like me) (and her parents were homophobic) (I think she might have texted me at one point years down the line to tell me she had a girlfriend but it was after I deleted our text history and I'm chronically unable to remember to put people's names into my contacts so who knows)

but that's all an aside. that's a bad method.

anyway if you want to start making music in earnest, doing what I did when I got serious about making songs instead of trying to impress girls whose parents wanted to destroy me with their minds here's a better answer

go acquire FL Studio. it's apparently really easy to do this because people have been acquiring it for years, or so I've heard. FL is good for learning because you've got 20 years worth of free tutorials available to you on youtube to dig through and plenty of stock vsts to play with out of the box

FL Studio is, realistically, the only tool you actually need to start making music. you could get away with less, but it's what I used, and as long as you don't pick up Specific Bad Habits, your experience with it will transfer to other DAWs if you decide to switch it later

that's all, really

if you go this route, the golden rule I'm going to impart on you right now is that you need to have a limiter on your songs. the default FL studio song templates have one, so you should keep it until you know enough to know why you might adjust something like that

it doesn't matter if it sounds fine in the editor without a limiter. everyone thinks it's not a big deal at the time, but as you get more experienced, there's literally nothing short of getting in legal trouble that you'll regret more than realising that your old work is almost entirely unsalvageable because you didn't put a limiter on it and now half of the audio is just lost data to clipping

I'm gonna put a few more recommendations for things I've used, just so you can consider them if you need something else to chew on. everything past this point is entirely optional and you'll do just fine with FL Studio alone. in fact, probably don't worry about everything below the line

-=-

items marked with [F] are free.

DIGITAL AUDIO WORKSTATIONS THAT AREN'T FL

for tracker-based editing and chiptunes, use Renoise. you'll either love or hate trackers, and while they have a steeper learning curve than piano roll DAWs, they might come more naturally to you. I personally think that Renoise is a lot of fun to use. it kinda has an "addictive" quality to it, as funny as that is to say

for quickly sketching songs, use [F]Jummbox. it's an html workstation (multiplatform!) that writes your sketches to a url, meaning it's pretty easy to collaborate on musical sketches. Jummbox is good for making chiptune style instrumentals, but what makes it especially accessible is the fact that it works on a piano roll system, which will be familiar to you if you're working in FL

for writing sheet music, I recommend starting with [F]Musescore. I'll warn you right now that there aren't really any good notation editors and you're making lesser-of-evils decisions when you pick any of them, but it's probably the best compromise out there right now. it's the one I use when I need to hand something to a physical musician. you can also export pieces as midi, although there's better ways to do that lol

-

VSTs

if you can acquire Pianoteq, do that. if you feel uncomfortable with acquiring it, [F]Keyzone Classic is free and can sound pretty nice with a bit of work, but you really have to learn to work with it

if your workstation can handle it performance-wise, go pick up [F]Vital - Spectral Warping Wavetable Synth. there's tons of free presets for this out there and it sounds good. cool synth. Serum: Advanced Wavetable Synthesizer is also good and has plenty of presets, but it's on the pricy side, so consider how comfortable you are with [finding a friend to buy it for you]

[F]Decent Sampler doesn't do much out of the box, because it's just a tool for playing sample banks, but if you go to [F]Pianobook, you can find tons of weird and fun sample packs of just about everything you can imagine. sounds derived from folk instruments, industrial equipment, lego sets, stylophones, choirs, whatever. incredibly useful.

Valhalla VintageVerb. this is the reverb plugin. you want this one. [F]Valhalla Super Massive is also good but it's more focused on alien-sounding reverb effects and enormous spaces, so it's kind of got a niche use case and you should be a little careful with it

if you've heard a lo-fi hip hop song on youtube, it probably used [F]iZotope Vinyl. this one can save you a lot of time if you're going for that sound because it comes with all the little vinyl flourishes outside of compression (like dust crackling) that you'd otherwise have to add yourself

[F]Genny VST is advertised as giving a genesis/megadrive sound, but what actually makes it shine is that it's an actual synth emulating the YM2612 and SN76489 sound chips. this means you can create your own sounds that work within those specs, which is a lot of fun! definitely beats just using samples, if you ask me

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HARSH VSTS THAT I PERSONALLY LIKE BUT WHICH ALSO MIGHT !!HURT!! YOU. SO BE VERY CAREFUL USING THESE.

[F]Tritik Krush is a bitcrushing plugin. it does a good job of bitcrushing and downsampling. I use it a lot in my songs, but you've really gotta know how to keep this one under control, because it's fully capable of making painful sounds on accident and can completely devour your mix

[F]FSA Latcher is a gorgeous noisebox. it screams in horrible ways and makes dying machine noises in various colours. this is the musical equivalent of working with radioactive material, so be extremely careful using this in anything you don't want to hurt the listener's ears

girlfriend just told me I have to recommend [F]Noise Engineering Ruina to you if I'm making a category with this heading. I don't personally use it, but she likes it (she's better at music than I am) and it's free, so you should go pick it up. "it annihilates sounds very deliciously" (maybe I should use it)

-

hope that helps a bit!

[sunshine-zenith]

I remember someone pointing out that even by anti-fairy standards, Irep's cube shape was unusual, and that it might have something to do with Anti-Wanda craving/eating rectangular objects all throughout her pregnancy lmao. And even if he can change his head shape- I'm assuming that changing his name to Irep specifically to match Peri was also a choice and he's just really committed to the bit.

But I do hope he comes back, if for no other reason than I'm fairly certain they were on good terms by the end of the original series; or at least, Peri didn't hate Irep, and was actively trying to befriend him. Did they pull a Hazel and Dev and that friendship only lasted until Irep got jealous of Peri again and then the cycle just. Continued infinitely. Why is Peri gloating and laughing in Irep's face these days.

Like I don't think Irep has really changed through the years, but Peri definitely has and it's clearly impacted their relationship.

I just wanna applaud those last few paragraphs because you helped out to words another thing I was thinking about — Peri grew up, and he looks it. Irep hasn’t, if anything he’s gotten less mature. Him still looking like his infant self could be a reflection of that, either by the writers out of universe or as a subconscious manifestation in universe (or, yeah, it could be all those couch cushions lol)

He did specifically call Peri’s name change irritating, so I’m imagining there’s some bitterness on his part at least

I do desperately hope that if we get a season 2, we get something to fill the gap between Irep and Peri’s infancy and adulthood — a flashback, some sort if magic hijinx, even an off hand comment. Outside of their parents, they are each other’s most long lasting relationships, and there was some serious growth by the end of the original series for both of them

When Cosmo and Wanda said to Dev that Peri was waiting for him to call and that he thought they were just “on a break,” it made me wonder if something similar happened between him and Irep — like at some point, they had their own falling out (possibly closer to what Dev and Hazel went through throughout the series’s than Peri and Dev), and Peri just Waited. He waited for Irep to cool down, to call. He put in so much work to befriend Irep, got to know and treasure him, and he was possibly in denial for the longest time about losing his friend (which, again, would just be another loss for him — he lost his brother, he ended up low/no contact with his parents for a while, and now he’s lost his first ever godkid. Having lost Irep would be another thing for him to deal with along the way)

That might even be why he acted so smug about Jorgen putting Irep in his place — it could’ve been a little bit of that years old hurt leaking out, combined with the fresh hurt of his godkid basically rejecting him. Maybe not the most mature way to handle things, but hey, Peri was going through it that episode

I would love to see them possibly reconcile, as a way to officially close the arc from the original series (but that would require them to handle the whole Letting Peri Almost Die From Magic Build Up thing. I give Dev a lot of leeway with that since he legit had no idea, but Irep had to know he was basically committing manslaughter, even if he didn’t think through the fact that if Peri dies, he probably also dies. Dude needs to at the very least give Peri an I’m Sorry for that one first)

[hedwig221b]

Idk what kind of crack c*caine you put in the happiest of all that I STILL read it once a week ever since you posted I can probably recite some of the paragraphs by heart lmfaooo I’d love to know if you have anything similar in the works at any point of time in the future but regardless just wanted to tell how obsessed I’m with this particular fic lol

LMFAO 😭😭😭

I don't even know what to say except THANK YOU??? For enjoying the fic so much? I'm giggling now lol, this is the best message to receive after a long work day 💗 all my heart goes to you!

I mean, I guess, Predators has the same vibe with Stiles running away and thinking it's for the best and Derek being like oh hell nah, love

And I'm gonna write New Moon au (after I finish Twilight au) and the separation scene is gonna be devastating. And Stiles is so not gonna deal with that well. And the reunion is gonna be nuts. I know with The Happiest of All I went all in on the breaking up angst, but here it's gonna be, like, one hundred times more painful.

[feveredvisions]

Doubt

(Tommy Riordan Conlon x Reader)

Summary: No one can hate a job faster than you can. Just three weeks in, everything wrong was unveiled. A toxic scheming cheapo boss, overworked and underpaid managers and other employees, being a newbie who trains the tenured managers on a new software you googled the manual for, disorganised system that makes you strangle yourself every shift. Your boyfriend, Tommy Conlon, catches you in the middle of strangling yourself. You spiral and he lets you until you drop another break up bomb to which he takes his time to unwind you and remind you who you are and what you're capable of. And that breaking up is never an option to solve a problem that can easily be chucked down to hell. Author's Note: I dedicate this imagine to anyone who hates working and only does it for the paycheque and to settle their debts and build their savings. Fuck this job and fuck y'all, *I mutter my mantra as I log in on the dot.* It's been a rough ass week y'all. Needed me some Tommy for comfort. I'm dropping an emo Harry Da Souza x Jan Da Souza blurb next xxx Also tysm @saradika-graphics for the cutesy dividerss Pls forgive any grammatical errors. Your author is deprived of sleep and freedom from the corporate shackles and intense hormonal imbalances. But fuck it;s finally the end of the week. My suffering ends. It makes me happy that I get to share my writing with y'all. I hope you enjoy this one. Would love to hear your thoughts and everything in between.

Also plsplsplsss tell me if you like the shift + enter spacing in the entire paragraph block. Are they too close and too strainig to the eyes? Lemme know so I can put it back to regular Tumblr spacing

Three weeks into her new job (actually three days, she's already had a bad feeling,) and she already feels like she’s swallowed something rotten. The shine of working at her new job had rusted, souring her stomach. At first, it was oh-so perfect. She gets to work at home, not having to wake up hours earlier to prepare for the commute, and no office politics to deal with everyday. Or so she thought. The delivery day of her shiny brand new equipment was like Christmas day. Her boyfriend, Tommy helped her haul everything inside the house and turn the spare room used for storing unused seasonable clothes into a cosy li’l office. Unboxing and peeling off the protective plastic seal from the fresh equipments felt like opening gifts on a christmas morning. “Look at you,” Tommy teased you with a cheeky grin as he ruffled your hair. “Fancy corporate shit.” You swatted him away as you laughed.

Now, the same room felt…disgusting. As if she were a corporate war veteran stepping into the familiar landmines of corporate bullshit, mixed with the ghostly stench of coffee breath and the musky damp air conditioned smell of the room that’s as cold and empty as a corpse’s. She tried to change it a bit and make it better in her own home that she shares with Tommy. Open the windows to let fresh air in. Letting the sunlight in where like a cat, she liked being under. Even brought in a little succulent desk plant that came in robust and fat, but was now already dying because she kept forgetting to water it. She thought it was self-sufficient like the seller said and didn't need to be watered too often as it could drown. Apparently, no, the rot was deeper. She'd probably sucked the life out of it. Seven months of unemployment had felt like an eternity. Five years at her last corporate gig that filed for bankruptcy? A blink. And now here she was, back in the trenches, except this time, the battlefield was in her own damn home. And her new boss? A fucking small business war criminal in a stupid polo shirt.

Tommy noticed the changes before she could say anything. He always did. At first, it was little things—her griping about the eight-hour workday so passionately she could be in a BBC live interview ("Who the fuck decided this? This is humanity gone wrong! I'm very sure that my life's purpose is not to slave away my hours to corporate nor have the current economic state dictate what I get to enjoy without guilt today.”), the way she’d passionately flip off at her monitor with both fingers almost every five minutes. Then come the muttered cuss under her breath (“yeah go fuck yaself, buddy”).

Today, after his rigorous training, Tommy caught his girl mid-performance. Fresh off a call and faux-strangling herself with both her hands wrapped around her neck, eyes rolled back and her tongue stuck out grotesquely as she let out a guttural whine, "Guh— just fucking diiiiieeeeee." Tommy wasn't sure whether to laugh or be actually concerned. He walked to the doorframe leading to your office and leaned beside it with a curious frown on his face. A white towel wrapped around his neck, his shorts hanging low on his hips. His hair and body were drenched and glistening in sweat. White sando soaked and stuck to his skin. "The hell was that?" She froze, hands still locked around her throat. Slowly, she peeled them away like she’d been caught mid-crime. Tommy had seen her do far worse shit than this even in her sleep. Nothing could embarrass her in front of this Adonis sculpted by the gods. "...Stress relief?" Tommy’s mouth twitched. "Looks like a bad porno gag." She groaned, slumping back in her chair and rubbing her temples. “Forget you saw anything, babe." But Tommy didn’t move. He just studied her—the way her fingers drummed too fast on the desk, the way her knee bounced like she was revving for a fight. He wasn't letting this shit go anymore. "You’ve been like this for days," he said. “What’s goin’ on?" “Nothing. Just work shit." She waved a hand, forcing a laugh. "The usual." “Uh-huh." He pushed off the doorframe and walked inside until he was standing before her. She could feel his radiating body heat on her face and his delicious post-workout masculine sweaty musk mixed with a hint of Irish spring filling her nostrils. God, she adored how good he smelled after fighting the heavy bag for an hour. It was the smell of heaven on earth which worked better than any calming sniffing stuff. "Try again." He challenged. His tone was a low, steady I’m not fucking around tone—made her chest tighten. And like a dam breaking, it all pours out.

“My boss—” Her voice cracked. “He’s trying to fire this woman he introduced to me as ‘Bitch,’ told me to watch her on Zoom and document if she cusses so he can ‘build a case.’ So I called her instead. Know what she said? Poor woman has had four heart attacks, Tommy. Four. Last one landed her in the hospital with a bill she couldn’t pay because payroll held her check.” She dug her nails into her palms. “And that’s just the warm-up. He’s canning the entire senior staff to outsource cheaper labor, had me train managers on software I Googled and watched on YouTube yesterday, and now he wants my five-year plan because I’m ‘ambitious’ which just means he’ll work me to death for half what I’m worth.” Tommy's jaw twitched. "Jesus." "And get this,” she grins emptily. “Exactly a day after he laid out his grand plans of butchering up his company, his wife miscarried their baby.” She clapped her hands together like a magician. “Talk about karma biting him right in his anus. Who would want to have a father like him who exploits people for CHEAP, anyway?!" She choked on the guilt, hands flying up to cover her face. “I fucking celebrated his tragedy, Tommy. I'm a fucking monster!” “Nah. Makes you human, babe.” Tommy gently peels her hands away from her face and puts them flat on his chest as he squatted down to her level. She barrels on, voice cracking. “It’s a disaster, Tommy! The managers I ‘trained’ are supposed to train me now, except it’s been delayed for a week because they’re too busy doing payroll, HR shit, dispatch, and setting up hardware for his three other failing businesses. There is nothing in-between to fit me in for training. I'm fucked. And I actually have no faith left that it's ever gonna get better. This is a newly bought company and he's handling everything so poorly. Expecting people to work on what's lacking and outsourcing manpower when he can't even pay proper professionals to get work done.”

Tommy stared. “That’s not a company. That’s a pyramid scheme.” “I know!” She nearly screamed it. “But I can’t quit. Seven months of rejections. Seven. Now I’m here, and I wanna vomit every time I log in, but walking away means admitting defeat to every smug asshole who said I was too picky.” Tommy continued to listen. He lets her spiral, lets her rant, lets her self-destruct in front of him like a building collapsing in slow motion.

"Maybe I should just snort ashwagandha up my ass, you know?” Tommy's brows furrowed, “The fuck?” “Numb myself to submission just until the year ends and I've settled my financial goals for this year. Suck it up and take it in the ass. For a fucking year. Just a year.” She ends up mumbling to herself as if she was brainwashing herself. Her heart was pounding in her chest wildly. Thoughts completely scattered. Running like a Tasmanian devil without a sense of direction. Vomiting her words. “And I'm thinking that, maybe if this doesn't work out, then maybe I should be on my own and really focus on figuring things out myself, you know? Without inconveniencing others. Just me. Maybe that's what I need.”

Tommy stared at her like she’d just spat in his face. The rest of her rant he can take but bringing up another breakup over a stupid job that pisses her off? Hell fucking no. "You done?" His sharp tone cut clean through her rant like a blade. “You really think you’re a burden to me?” She opened her mouth, then shut it. Her jaw clenches to keep herself from crying like a kid. “You don’t get to bail on us over some fuckin’ sleazebag CEO with a power complex. You’re smarter than that. Stronger than that.” His hand curled gently but firmly around the side of her neck, not squeezing, just holding. Steady. Keeping her head straight. “You’ve kept me alive, remember that? You held my drunk ass together after Iraq. You dragged me outta bed when I couldn't fuckin' move. So don't you dare act like this ain't worth my time.”

“I just—” she started. He moved his hand from her neck to squeeze her cheeks lightly. Little puffy rabbit throwing a tantrum. He resists the urge to laugh and squeeze your cheeks some more and play with it. “You just got your head so far up this job's ass you forgot who the fuck you are. My girl doesn't break up with me 'cause some fuckwit can't run his company." She averts her eyes away from him, lightly pouting as she listens to what she already knows but somehow always manages to go over her head.

“Look, babe. You want money? We've got our savings. And I'm winning that damn fight and laying you down on our winnings. You want purpose? I’ll help you find it. But you don’t get to act like I picked the wrong girl. You’re mine. You’ve always been mine. And I’ll be damned if I let you forget who the fuck you are.” She looks up at him, her brows furrowed, eyes thickly glazed with tears about to pour down her face and her mouth quivering until a tear spills. The fuck was she thinking she'd be better off without him?

Tommy thumbs them away. His girl slightly leaning into his calloused touch against her warm soft face. “C’mon,” he murmurs, voice softer now. “You think I don’t know what it’s like? To hate yourself for needin’ help?” She shakes her head, but he doesn’t let her look away.

“After Paddy died,” he says, “I drank ‘til I couldn’t stand. You remember?” It still stings her heart as she remembers. The nights she’d find Tommy slumped against the bathroom door, the way he’d snarl at her to ‘leave him the fuck alone’ right before he’d collapse into her arms. “You stayed,” he says simply. “Even when I didn’t deserve it.” Her throat burns. “That’s different.” “Bullshit.” His grip tightens on her facejust enough to make her focus. “You think I give a damn about your paycheck? I slept in my car for two years before us. We’ll survive.”

Her heart warms.

Then he chuckles as one of his many favourite memory of theirs surfaced his head. “You remember how we met?” She blinks. “Yeah. The office parking lot. You in your rusted-out Charger and me always parking my Honda near yours just to take the chance at you finally robbing me then slashing me to death before I make it inside.”

-----

Flashback:

It was an ungodly hour past midnight and it was cold as hell and lightly snowing. Her fingers are numb. She rushed to her car which was the only one remaining at the parking lot along with the other banged up Charger that lives on the same spot. She turns her in the ignition which only gave her—ticktickticktick—but the engine won’t catch. She banged her forehead against the steering wheel out of frustration—“Fuck! Fuck! Fuuuuck!”—just hard enough to feel the poking sting in her already pounding head, but not hard enough to deploy the airbags. A knock on her window nearly launched her into orbit.

The hobo, the one who lived in the rusted-out Charger two spaces over, was crouched beside her door, his scowl visible through the glass. Up close, he was younger than she’d thought. And bigger. Jesus Christ, those shoulders. She rolled the window down a millimetre. “If this is a robbery, I’ve got $12 and a granola bar.”

He blinked. “Your battery’s dead.” “No shit, Sherlock. Fuck my fucking life.” “Pop the hood.”

She hesitated. “Are you gonna harvest my organs?” “Lady,” he deadpanned, “if I wanted you dead, you wouldn’t see me comin’.” Fair point. He sounded smart and experienced enough for it, so there's always a chance then.

Ten minutes later, after expertly jury-rigging her battery cables, her car roared to life. She stared at him over the hood, snowflakes catching in his dark hair. “Thanks,” she muttered. He wiped his hands on his jeans. “Get a new battery.” “I’ll add it to the list,” she simply said, and drove off before she could say something stupid.

The next morning, she woke up extra early to prepare a meal for two with a thermos of coffee. She drove to work and parked across his car. Wordlessly handing him through the driver's window her offering and token of appreciation in the form of a bag filled with packaged homecooked meals for the day on his windshield the next morning. He drinks and eats them all and doesn’t say a word but that evening, her wipers are cleared of snow before she gets there.

-------------------end of flashback-------------------

His thumb traces her jaw. “Then you started leavin’ cooked meals in my car. ‘Accidentally’ buying two coffees. Naggin’ me to get my shit together like a pissed-off fairy godmother.” She snorts. “You hated me.” “Yeah and you didn’t give up.” His grip tightens. “So why the hell would I?”

She opens her mouth to argue, but he cuts her off with a kiss. Hard and tenderly scalding. Her heart grew tender as she kissed Tommy back. Too tender that it ached. She questioned if it was possible to love someone too much. Indeed, it was. “Quit the job. Or not, but always keep the fight.” He pulled away, his forehead pressed against hers. “Just stay, okay? Don’t act like I’m doin’ you some favor by toleratin’ your ass. You’re it for me, baby.”

For a moment, she settles. Slumping towards him, letting out the heaviest sigh she's ever let out in a while. It felt good to lean onto Tommy's unit of a body and have him hold her. Warm and strong. All hers. "God what the hell was I thinking saying all that shit. I'm sorry, baby” Tommy exhales through his nose, the fight draining out of him as she slumps against his chest. His fingers thread through her hair, blunt nails scraping lightly against her scalp in that way he knows settles her. Her eyes rolling back from the hypnotic sensation. “You weren’t thinkin’,” he mutters. “That’s the problem.” She lets out a muffled weak laugh. "Oh really? I must’ve made all of my meltdowns up for fun then." “Nah. Just somehow always forgettin' who the fuck’s in your corner.” "I hate that you're right." "I know"

------original end but here's an extended cutie pie version--------

She tilts her head back to look at him. Admiring her past, her present, and her future. “These thoughts got mean hands sometimes. Or I might be two days away from my period. God, I haven't even checked my calendar.”

Tommy’s mouth quirks. “I'd give it an early jumpstart if you want.”

She snorts, swatting his shoulder. “You’re disgusting and a freak.” Then she leans in to plant a brief kiss on his mouth. “And I'm the luckiest girl to have you.”

Tommy doesn't let the kiss end. He deepens it, biting her lower lip just hard enough to make her gasp, then sweeping his tongue against hers like he's chasing the taste of her guilt and turning it into something sweeter. When he pulls back, her lips are swollen, her eyes glazed with sweetness. It made Tommy's heart ache too in the most pleasant way. All that he sees and holds right now-- all his. Forever his.

"Shower," he orders, already hauling her up by the thighs.

She yelps as he tosses her over his shoulder, her office chair spinning away behind them.

"No!" She kicks halfheartedly. "Put me down, you sweaty caveman! I didn't even get to properly sniff you!”

Tommy barks a laugh, swatting her ass as he carries her toward the bathroom. "The fuck's wrong with you?"

“You smell good," she grumbles, nose pressed against his damp shoulder blade. "Like... salt and violence and man."

"Yeah?" He kicks the bathroom door open. "Tell me that when I'm elbow-deep in your pussy. Fuckin' weirdo.”

“Oohh now we're talking.”

—FIN—

A/N: OOOHHHH DAAAAMN CAN I HAVE THIS SHIT TOO PLS T_T sooo anyway I've got a smutty alternative of this bc Tommy after training is charged to the heavens and he's got a lot to give especially to his girl. Lots of discipline and lots of load. I'll publish it a bit later for the freaks xx Just gotta sleep first.

Thanks so much for reading my stuff <33

[toxicpineapple]

writing tips masterpost

hello to my loyal tumblr followers... i am often asked to give writing advice but usually when people ask me this i'm nooooot completely sure what to say despite having a ton of advice to give. it's such a broad question when there are so many different things i can advise on, right? so i thought i'd make a sort of writing advice masterpost where i can compile the tips that i think people specifically in fandoms could benefit the most from hearing, OR that i wish someone had told me when i was still finding my footing as a writer.

hopefully this will be helpful to you. i am putting all of the advice under a read more since this is going to be a long one. let's roll!

✬ paragraph breaks are your friend

the fastest way to get me to stop reading a fic is if i click in and see that there are NO paragraphs made and the entire piece is in a huge block of text. no matter how good your work is, i just can't read it at that point. the giant paragraph makes me get lost, i can't focus on anything... it's a huge no.

the trick is you want your paragraphs to sort of act as a guide for your reader, taking them through the story, keeping them engaged. do not be afraid to do short paragraphs! i can understand wanting to shy away from one or two sentence paragraphs for fear of not having "enough substance" in your work, but the truth is, a thousand short paragraphs is ten times easier to read than a huge block of text.

realistically, you want to have a good amount of variety in your paragraph length. variety is key. readers will notice when your work gets formulaic, and some people will like that, but for others that can turn people away from your work. but don't force it! a paragraph should end at the end of a statement, or if the paragraph is getting too long then cut off the thought and continue in the next paragraph with a transitional phrase.

as a general rule of thumb, you want lines of dialogue by different speakers to be put in separate paragraphs. you also want to avoid doing huge chunks of narration or exposition in the same paragraph as you introduce a new speaker. just make a new paragraph! no big deal. i guarantee you your reader will be way more engaged and nobody is going to come at you for doing more rather than less.

✬ make sure the reader knows who is speaking and when

you don't have to end off every line of dialogue with "she said" and in fact i would really recommend you don't. but you ALWAYS need to have some kind of indication in the text as to who is speaking, otherwise the reader can get lost.

this doesn't necessarily mean that you always have to explicitly say who is saying what, though. if it is obvious in a scene who is saying something -- so for example, a scene where there are only two characters talking OR the dialogue has some kind of phrase, statement, etc that makes it obvious who the speaker is -- then in that case you can just let the dialogue speak for itself. sometimes in writing less can be more. you disrupt the flow of a scene if you start to exposit unnecessarily when the reader could reasonably work something out for themself.

✬ "said" is your friend too

related to the last piece of advice, here's another note: don't shy away from using the word "said".

don't overuse it, either. obviously, you don't want every single line to be "he says" "she says" back and forth, especially when they might be asking questions or shouting, in which case the word "said" probably isn't all that applicable at all. but it's a nice default. if you catch yourself busting out the thesaurus, my recommendation? quit it. just use said. it's not going to hurt you and the reader isn't going to mind.

but yeah, in the event that a character is raising their voice, whispering, inquiring -- there are tons of other words you can use in lieu of said and then an adverb. it's just context-dependent, and also, you don't really want to lean too far one way or another. like i said, variety is key. too much of the same breaks immersion.

✬ if you wouldn't say it yourself, probably don't use it in writing

another related tip. look, i get it. you want to spruce up your writing with synonyms. but the fact of the matter is that a lot of these words that "mean the same thing" on paper actually have wildly differing connotations and if you don't understand what those are you're going to look kind of silly whipping out a word you just found off the internet. we can usually tell, too.

your vocabulary will naturally grow and expand as you continue to read and learn. you don't have to try and force it to seem smarter in your writing. people who can write compelling prose and dialogue without throwing in fancy words they barely understand look a lot more intelligent than people who have a thesaurus at the ready 24/7.

✬ if there's a simpler way to say it, take it

this one can be sort of style-dependent, so if it's not your cup of tea then feel free to take or leave this tip, but in my opinion, taking a whole seven-line paragraph to describe a simple action wastes both your and the readers' time.

how many times have you read a fic where the main characters are having a conversation with these long rambling paragraphs between lines of dialogue? sometimes this makes sense! if you were writing a death note fic it would absolutely make sense for light or L to be pausing every few seconds to carefully analyse their opponent's move... but that's not always the case. sometimes characters are just making small talk.

i'm not saying you can't show off. you should show off where applicable. but there's a time and place. sometimes a scene benefits more from you taking the easy way to describe something and moving on. flowery language is great, but if you're meandering too much the reader will lose interest and attention.

✬ a metaphor is useless if nobody knows what it means

writing is subjective and highly personal. write for yourself first and foremost, and use the metaphors that feel right to you -- but the best metaphorical pieces, to me, are the ones that people can understand and identify with.

you've read a story like that, haven't you? with a reoccurring theme or motif that comes back into play at the end in a way that makes you feel so satisfied and complete? THAT'S what you aim for with literary devices like that. if you write a story that nobody can understand, with metaphors that just don't make any sense -- then you haven't really successfully told a good story, have you?

i understand wanting to have a magnum opus. i think it's easy to fall into the "misunderstood writer" mindset where you want your pieces to be so magnificent that only the likeminded will get it -- but writing is a form of communication. metaphor is just another means with which we can illustrate how we feel. you WANT your readers to understand what you're doing with the metaphors, you WANT the people who step away from your story to know what you were trying to say. you don't have to be obvious, just make it good. make it something that can be reasonably drawn from the text.

at the end of the day flowery language is just flowery language. that doesn't actually make your story good.

✬ grammar intermission

(.) period/full stop: used at the end of sentences. oftentimes not used at the end of sentences in dialogue, because lines of dialogue are considered a fragment of a larger sentence. use a period/full stop at the end of a line of dialogue if the dialogue is followed up by another complete sentence. example:

"i just went to the store," he said, scratching his head.

"i just went to the store." he scratched his head.

(,) comma: used in the middle or to separate different clauses (parts/sections) of sentences. used for incomplete clauses, AKA sections of the sentence that could not function as individual sentences. also used to indicate a slight pause. example:

she reached for the ripest banana, plucking it from the bunch.

a comma can also be replaced by a conjunction like "and" or "but". example:

she reached for the ripest banana and plucked it from the bunch.

(;) semi colon: used to separate different complete clauses in sentences, AKA sections of the sentence that are related but COULD function individually as their own sentences. example:

he sighed as he looked out the window; it had been so long since he stepped outside.

not to be confused with

(:) colon: used at the end of a line that leads into or introduces another line. example:

his fingers drummed restlessly against the window sill. it was finally happening: he was finally leaving this place.

(-) hyphen: used to connect compound words like three-years-old or hyphenated surnames like jones-smith.

(–) en dash: used to indicate ranges of time or distance, like 3–4 hours.

(—) em dash: a girl's best friend. slash j. but an em dash is used to indicate a few different things: an abrupt end to a thought or sentence, a "cut-in" where you interject something tangentially or unrelated before returning to the original thought, or a diversion in the sentence/thought. examples:

"no, listen, you don't understand—"

he scowled—an ugly look on his usually handsome features—and told her to be quiet.

it's not like she had wanted it to go that way—but when had it ever mattered what she wanted?

(()) parentheses: used to add additional context, information, or a semi-unrelated thought that would break the flow of an ongoing sentence without completely taking the reader out. example:

"no, i'm sorry. i just forgot to call you this morning," he said, looking away. (in truth, he'd sat by the phone for fifteen minutes trying to psyche himself into it, but hadn't been able to muster the courage.)

✬ show don't tell, and tell don't show

show don't tell is one of the classic pieces of writing advice that i do, often, think is correct -- but it's a little more nuanced than just never telling your readers what a character is thinking. you want the work to speak for itself without you implanting messages or themes into the reader's brain. at the same time though you don't want them to be doing too much work because it breaks immersion.

this ties into what i was saying above about simpler being better sometimes. you want to be concise especially in scenes that might call for it. a fight scene should be quick and snappy. no need to dig into the physical sensation of being enraged -- just say the character is pissed! but if a character is having a meltdown or panicking, you can get SO much more out of describing how that feels than just outright saying it.

✬ remember your perspective

another huge thing with show don't tell is that you don't want your character to be able to objectively say what everyone else is thinking and feeling -- unless that makes sense for them within the context of the story. really dig into it. DOES the character have a reason to know what their opponents, friends, etc are thinking? how well do they know the other characters? how attentive are they to the emotions of those around them?

it's better to focus on descriptions than labels in that case. say what face a character is making, describe their body language or tone. your character can have impressions, just make it clear that those ARE their impressions. and let your character be wrong! they do not have to be a completely objective source of information.

✬ when it comes to representation, if you aren't confident you can do it well, don't do it at all

i'm one of those people who's kind of of the opinion that white or cishet or otherwise systemically advantaged people have no place being the loudest voices in conversations about representation, least of all AS the representatives. if you are someone with systemic privilege and you choose to portray someone who is oppressed -- that's not necessarily a bad thing. but you need to be willing to do your research and have a sensitivity reader, and you have to be ready for people to say you did it wrong.

not much else to be said about that. your voice on the matter isn't actually all that important. there are people from the demographics involved who DO have stories to tell about themselves that will be MUCH more valuable than your perception of them, so it's honestly better to just let them tell it. that's how i feel.

✬ don't break the rules unless you know how to follow them. in other words, your rebellion should be obvious

a lot of times i see people breaking grammar or other rules and citing "stylistic" choices as their reasons why. which is all good and well, to an extent -- but you want it to be very clear that you ARE breaking the rules on purpose in a way that adds to the artistic merit of your piece.

if you don't know the rules, then it really just comes across like messy work. you both have to know how to apply the rules, and also how to break them in a stylistically significant way. if it doesn't make sense for the rules to be broken, if it says nothing... it's honestly better to just follow them. that's my take.

✬ don't be scared of names and pronouns

i said before that you want variety in your work, and that is very very true -- but it's also true that certain words like names, pronouns, etc will sort of blend into the background in writing. people don't notice them. that means if you're using a name or pronoun a lot in a scene to make it clear who exactly is being referred to...

hey. look into my eyes. breathe. it's okay. you do not have to resort to highlighting arbitrary characteristics of the characters. i know. just breathe. it's okay. use their names. they have them for a reason. it's all good.

this isn't to say that you SHOULDN'T do that, just do it when it makes sense to. if height is something the characters are noticing then use "the shorter boy". if age is relevant, eye colour, hair colour, whatever -- go ahead and use them. but don't be excessive with it. i should not be having to read the bluenette more than i'm reading shuichi's actual goddamn name.

✬ read

this is the huge one. reading other works informs your writing. it teaches you skills and tricks you can use. it helps expand your dialogue and your world view. it might even highlight to you things you do too much of in your own writing. read, all the time, whenever you can. it doesn't have to be books. it can be fanfic, articles, whatever -- just keep reading, because you will be passively absorbing knowledge during that time and it'll help you grow as a writer.

✬ practice

BOOOOOO TOMATO TOMATO TOMATO! SHE SAID THE THING SHE SAID IT!

but listen, it's literally just true. i write almost every day for at least a couple of hours and i have been on a trend of consistent growth for the past five years. go read my fics from 2019 if you don't believe me. i've grown fast and i've grown constantly. you just DO grow through constant practice, even if it doesn't always seem that way.

not only that, but you start to build confidence too. writing a lot helps develop those muscles to a point where you start to realise that you ARE that good and you DO have that dawg in you. or whatever. you just have to keep at it. you're not going to magically improve thinking for six months about how you want to be a better writer without practicing anything about it.

✬ yeah, betas are good

you want to have a good editor. i know that that can feel like having someone ELSE be the reason your piece is good, but that's genuinely not it. a beta reader is a second pair of eyes on your work, someone who can tell you about the issues and mistakes you're missing. they'll tell you when something doesn't make sense. they'll point out your punctuation errors. you don't NEED to have a good editor for every crummy little oneshot... but it's good to have one.

✬ numbers are fine and all but don't compare yourself to other people

i think almost everyone in some kind of creative pursuit wants to get some kind of acknowledgement for it. we want to be the best we can be, and it can be discouraging to receive utterly no validation along the way! i get it!!

just don't get caught up in crunching the numbers. you are not as good as your fanbase is. you alone know your skillset and you absolutely should not say "well this other writer got THIS much attention" because that'll just wear you down. it really will. external validation will only keep you going for so long, and you'll always end up needing more. you HAVE to build your own personal confidence first or you'll crash and burn.

✬ read your writing out loud

there is no quicker way to see if something is wonky in your prose than reading it out loud and seeing if it makes sense verbally. i highly recommend this to anybody who struggles with sentence flow. it's a good one.

✬ yippee hooray!

🥰 and that's what i've got for now. thank you if you made it this far, please take all these tips as you will, it is all subjective of course, these are just the tips that help Me the most when i sit down to write something.

please feel free to ask me for additional advice (on specific topics if you could!) at any time, i love encouraging new writers and i am passionate about writing so i will gladly offer support in any way i can, including beta reading works for anybody who might need that.

take care now 💖

[the0p]

First date

fluff, awkward cheesy stuff, mlm, reader is given a specific outfit DEAL WITH IT😡, first date type thing, none idol au (I don't remember in jongho has his license or not let's pretend he does if he doesn't okay?? okay!!) (also idk what happened to the first paragraph and why it looks different from the rest of the text)

the clock red '6:00pm' and I was getting ready for a date with a guy I met during work. I worked as a batista at a local coffee shop, and we had a regular that always came in exactly at 8am on the dot, ordering the same drink every time. he had caught my eye months ago thanks to his amazing looks and the simple conversations we had. few days ago, I finally grew some balls and asked him out on a date, not expecting him to agree, just wanting to shoot my shot, but surprisingly enough, he agreed we enhanced numbers and made plans for Saturday. I didn't want to go too over to the top, so I went relatively simple with a white button-down, some black baggy jeans, my newrocks, a black lethal suit jacket, and some silver jewellery. he insisted on picking me up tonight, so now I just had to wait for a message. After a few minutes, my phone buzzed, and a text notification popped up on my screen from jongho. it was a simple "I'm here" text. I didn't bother opening it and bolted straight out my apartment door, going down to the ground floor and walking outside the cold air a bit unpleasant. I saw him parked not that far away, so I made my way over.

he stepped out of the car, waving at me with a bright smile on his face. it was a cute sight, making me much more excited for the upcoming night. "Hey, jongho." I said, returning the smile he gave me once I got close enough to not need to yell. "Hi y/n." his words held an obvious nervous tone to them, but I was nervous as well, so we were in the same boat. I got inside the car after we greeted each other him following after me. we didn't really have much of a plan for the date as neither of us wanted to do something too expensive. we both trew out ideas a few days before trough text, but at the end, he insisted on planning it promising he would make sure it's enjoyable. the ride was quiet for the most part as we drove around town for a bit until I chose to break it, wanting to have some sort of conversation to ease the tension. "So...what's the plan??" I asked, carefully glancing at him. "Well, my original thought was a coffee date, but you work at a coffee shop, so I chose against it." I laughed, finding the amounts of thought he put into this endearing. he laughed along as he pulled to a stop. "So I booked us something to do." I was a bit surprised. booked us something?? "Wait, isn't that like very expensive?" he brushed me off, getting out of the car as I followed after him. I felt bad as I didn't want anything expensive, let alone for him to spend the money on me "jongho if it was expensive I will pay you back you didn't have to do all that. I would have been very happy even with a coffee date, you know." he again brushed me off, putting his hands in the pockets of his coat as he looked at me. "Don't worry. it was a decent price, and I think it's a good way to get to know each other." he turned a corner and went inside a small building. I followed inside the whole place, smelling sweet and warm.

I looked around, seeing a few other people, most seeming to be couples having separate stations, a bunch of cooking supplies around them, and a piece of paper in front of them, which seemed to be instructions. I watched as jongho took off his coat and hung it up with the rest of the coats running a hand through his hair and rolling up the sleeves of his grey jumper. I was so mesmerised by his looks that I completely forgot why we were here. he caught my gaze, a shy smile on his lips as he gestured for me to take my jacket off as well. "I'll go talk to um, you know, the workers." he said, stumbling on his words as he left to talk to one of the workers. I took off my jacket, fixing my hair and shirt and regretting the white shirt now, but it was worth getting dirty. shortly after, he came back with two aprons in hand, handing me one of them as we put them on. one of the workers came over leading us to a free station and explaining what we can and can't do before handing us a recipe for brownies. everything we needed was already prepared and on the counter for us, so now we just needed to get to work.

the process itself was easy as we talked and got to know each other more. the warm and cosy atmosphere, making it less awkward than I originally thought it would be as I let my guard down and enjoyed the date to the fullest. we learned a lot about each other from the typical things to soke deeper things. After two hours, the baking process being dragged out a bit too long thanks to us messing around, we finished and the workers packed up the brownies for us in two bags so we could each take some home. "This was genuinely the best date I've ever been on thanks jongho" I said as I took the apron off looking at him as he nodded doing the same "I'm glad you had fun y/n I enjoyed it as well thanks for trusting me with the planning" I hummed a smile on my face as we each got our bags and got ready to leave. it was 8pm by now the sky dark and streets still as busy as ever people going to parties and clubs left and right. "I'm planning the next date, no questions asked." he looked at me as we approached his car, a teasing smile on his face. "Go all out." I nodded a pleased look on my face as he unlocked the car and got in, driving me back home. in all honesty, I didn't want the night to end, but I wasn't planning on saying anything cuse I had some things to do tonight anyway. the car ride this time wasn't as awkward compared to the very beginning when he picked me up. the conversation was so easy going with no awkward silence, just laughter. my apartment building was slowly coming into view as he parked right in front of it turning to look at me "I guess that's it for tonight" nodding, i undoing my seat belt turning to look at him as well holding eyecontact "I guess so."

"thanks for tonight y/n. Next dates on you"

"next dates on me."

i opened the door, stepping outside the car, waving bye to him as he did the same with a smile before he drove off and I went inside my apartment building.

[echoflowerwhispers]

Hihihihihihihihi vin can’t stop me from showing up /silly >:D

so uhhh hiiiiiiiiiii haven’t send you an ask in a hot minute….hmmmmmmmmmmmm least favorite portrayal of a character in fanon and why-? (If that makes sense—)

omg hihihihhihhi!!!!

I have SO MANY least fav portrayals!!!! I hate these bitches frfr

rant below cuz it's deff gonna become a rant lmao

Ok, the most obvious one is Blue's fanon portrayal because.... yeah....

The fandom has gotten a lot better at not babying him in the last few years, but still, that is a grown man and should be treated as such. Like yeah he can be hyper and fun and stuff but let him say fuck like damn. I honestly think Blue wouldn't even be that hyper. Yeah, he is high energy, but after everything he's gone through, I also think he'd be exhausted both mentally and emotionally. He's not a god like Dream or Ink, and that makes it harder for him to keep up to them in a way. Like Dream has been through so much shit he's just learned to block it out and power through until it's safe to be vulnerable and it only works so well because he is a god and he's had hundreds of years to learn how to tune things out. Blue doesn't have hundreds of years to learn how to manage himself perfectly, and on top of his own problems, he has to deal with Dream when he inevitably crashes and with Ink's general carelessness. Not to mention he has to be the one to intervene when Dream and Ink have another fight. Blue, in my opinion, needs a fucking break. To me, he is a tired person who does his best to be cheery for the sake of the people around him. He's definitely spent nights at the end of a bottle and he's definitely not as innocent as most of the fandom seems to think. If the Bad Guys would propose a truce, Blue would be the most skeptical about it too. Anyway this paragraph is fucking huge so we're moving on to the next one!!!

The next person who I dislike the fanon interpretation of is Reaper. I do also like most of the fanon aspects of Reaper, and also don't know much about his canon. To me Reaper has lived a life of solitude since everything he touches dies (except his brother and Life). I really doubt he went "ooh yuh wassup big mama" when he first met Geno. Like, let's be real here, the only reason he and Geno ever met is that Reaper was supposed to kill him. They probably had a fight and Reaper came out victorious because he's a god. I think he'd try to give Geno a gentle end and not just slice him in half with his scythe and that's when he realises he can touch Geno. But even then he wouldn't immediately give up and start courting him instead, like come on. When his touch wouldn't work, he'd try the scythe and when that wouldn't work, he'd get upset. He'd be frustrated that he can't do his job because, of course, he'd be. His job is his purpose and if he can't do it, then what's the point of him? It would take a long time for Reaper and Geno to actually get along and it would take an even longer time for Reaper to try to touch Geno again. I feel like they'd both be shit at this too. They've both been alone for such a long time and they have no clue how to manage this new companionship. It would be a rocky road and Geno would definitely be the one to initiate any sort of romantic relationship. And once that first brick is placed, then Reaper would start to act more like in fanon. I don't think he'd be constantly flirting and trying to get laid but still.

The next and last one I'm gonna talk about is Dream. I fucking hate fanon Dream and canon Dream isn't much better either. He is always interpreted as the innocent and happy little cinnamon roll and he just isn't. Like come on, that man drinks himself to sleep every other night and probably goes through 2 packs of cigarettes in a week. He is absolutely wridden with guilt for what happened to his brother and he feels like an idiot for not trying harder to protect Nightmare. He puts on this happy, positive mask and he wears it constantly, especially when he's in public, because he is supposed to be the perfect golden child. But he isn't and he hates himself for it. While Nightmare was physically abused and bullied, Dream was emotionally manipulated. He keeps this broken mindset of "I need to be useful and perfect" even through adulthood and not even Blue can help him see how wrong it is, because Blue also feels like this to some degree. Even with this positive mask of his Dream still wouldn't be so naive and innocent as the fandom makes him be. He would not hesitate to beat the shit out of any of Nightmare's subordonates or any other person who'd hurt others. He'd still see the good in people but it would definitely be overshadowed by the wrongs they've done. He'd obviously want to help them, but the more he fights with Nightmare the more he learns that you can't help someone who doesn't want help.

Anyway, I've rambled oh so much and if I think about it, there are probably more characters I hate the fanon interpretation but it's mostly in certain contexts (like the killermare ship or Horror when he's separated from the Bad Guys). I can tell y'all more if you want but I think this post is getting wayyyy too long lol.

Thx for the ask!!! I always love when y'all show up cuz you always have the best questions and I get to rant about my blorbos :3

Have a great day and thx for stopping by!!!

[wanderingmind867]

My ideas for a season six of Batman 1966. You can tell this is probably where i'm gonna end all of this, because I was getting so tired that I started just poaching ideas from old 40s and 50s comics. Turns out thinking of Three or Four seasons worth of stuff (all 60-70 episodes long) is incredibly exhausting. So here. I hope it's okay. I'm not rewriting this one again. I'm so exhausted, I'm gonna go take a break to use my switch:

Season 6: Season Six is almost all about Batman on his own. Robin and Batgirl make appearances as supporting leads every couple episodes, but Batman is now the leading star. I'd have Aunt Harriet be made more of a minor character too, and I'd replace her with Leslie Thompkins. We'd still see Aunt Harriet, obviously! She's too good to abandon fully! It's just… we'll see her less, since Dick is at College (thus eliminating the need for her to live at Wayne Manor).

Episodes 1 and 2: An adaptation of a story from Batman #32, except this episode features The Riddler in the place of The Joker. Either way, I'm getting really tired of writing all this stuff constantly. So here's a copy and pasted paragraph about the story (with joker's name merely replaced with riddler's):

The Riddler captures Batman with help from his henchmen and they take the vigilante to their secret hideout. The Riddler's latest inspiration has come from watching college students forced to endure humiliating initiation stunts. Riddler then contacts Robin and forces him to perform embarrassing but apparently harmless feats in order to keep Batman alive. However, Riddler is using Robin for his criminal activities and when the Boy Wonder realizes the truth, he prepares a trap for the Riddler.

Episodes 3 and 4: Batman deals with The Archer, an old villian who tried to act like a modern day Robin Hood. Now he's gotten even more blatant with his thefts, and he tries to rob Wayne Manor of all it's valuables (since he learned the Manor had less occupants since Dick Grayson and his Aunt left). Batman still manages to stop him, but The Archer really puts up a strong challenge.

Also, the Archer had to find new sidekicks. So meet Scarlet, Doncaster and Lady Clorinda. Those are all real names of characters from the Robin Hood stories. I just looked it up. But after this story, we probably won't see the archer for a while. I don't know how many more times I can work with his Robin Hood motif, so we'll probably reserve him for appearances in team-ups with other villians.

Episode 5: Shortly after dealing with The Riddler and The Archer, Batman ends up running into Man Bat for the very first time. It's very much a one for one retelling of Man Bat's first comic story, including the fact that Man Bat escapes Batman's clutches at the very last moment.

Episode 6: Harley Quinn is tired of being a mere sidekick, so she strikes out on her own! This episode was probably more fitting to air back during season five, but I never found a good place for it. But this is as good a place as any. And now that Harley Quinn is beginning to distance her crime career from that of The Joker, it means I now get two clownish adversaries to mess around with! If we're getting tired of the constant Cesar Romero appearances, a Harley Quinn modelled after Goldie Hawn now has all our needs covered.

Episodes 7 and 8: The first apperance of The Penguin this season; we get a plot based around an issue of the comics this time. Specifically, based off of Batman #190. The Penguin begins commiting crimes using the methods of the future, since he wishes to be ahead of the trend and above the curve. Since i'm honestly beginning to run out of ideas for these seasons, I think i may just start adapting some comic storylines whenever i feel no inspiration. The TV show did this too, so I see no reason why I can't do it.

Episodes 9 and 10: Two-Face breaks out of jail, and begins defacing public monuments to make them reflect the jekyll and hyde nature of his soul. With his new scheme, he successfully manages to ruin the reputations of many good men and women in gotham. He defaces statues, people, everything he can get his hands on. And although this is a bit of a change from his usual M.O., Batman still inevitably manages to solve the case and get Two-Face back behind bars.

Episode 11: Batman encounters Man Bat again, and this time finally managed to subdue him. But is this really the end of the Man Bat story? Not quite, as there's one more part. But we won't get to see that part until after one more story, sad to say.

Episodes 12 and 13: The Joker breaks out of prison to perplex Batman with crimes based around sound effects and cinema. The Joker manages to convince a film crew to help him film a new comedy, all about his attempts to triumph over Batman. But nobody expects that his "film" is actually all but a ruse; a simple snare to lead Batman right into the palms of his hands.

Episodes 14 and 15: Professor William McElroy has been released from jail on good behaviour charges. He comes to Hudson University to lead a lecture on mythology, but he accidentally falls off the stage and reverts back to his King Tut persona again. And as King Tut, he finally manages to achieve his greatest desire: he steals an experimental mind control beam from the schools science labs, and he manages to convince everyone on campus that they're all in the time of Ancient Egypt.

News of the strange case reaches Gotham after a few days, and Bruce quickly realises that Dick must've been hypnotized by that beam too. So now Batman has to head to Hudson University, to dethrone King Tut and his egyptian empire before he has a chance to spread it's influence across the globe.

Episode 16: The conclusion to the long Man Bat saga, wherein Batman has to cure both Kirk Langstrom and his wife Francine of their Bat transformations and mental afflictions. By crashing their wedding, Batman successfully manages to get to them in time to save them from themselves.

Episodes 17 and 18: Catwoman pines for fame and attention, so she begins framing Batman for crimes. While Batman becomes a wanted crook, she becomes a lavish celebrity amongst the lights of gotham high society. Inevitably, though, Catwoman ends up giving herself away. Namely, she can't help but enjoy the thrill of theft. So when she sees a rare cat stature owned by one of her high society acquaintances, she snaps and steals it.

But Batman had planted a tracker on that statue, so it was all a big ambush! Him and Catwoman get into a fight, and Batman successfully manages to clear his reputation (while Catwoman gets sent back to the penitentiary). What I would do in this episode, though: Catwoman (as played by Julie Newmar) ends up flirting with Bruce Wayne while she's a high profile celebrity. The two of them have some sort of romance going (the same way Catwoman and Batman did in the movie), but Catwoman still ruins her chances by trying to frame and kill Batman. If these two are ever going to work together, it's not going to be anytime soon.

Episodes 19, 20 and 21: The three Mister Freezes got into a heated dispute when we last saw them, so they now have all been forced into using different names. Mister Freeze is George Sanders, Mister Zero is Otto Preminger and Mister Chill is Eli Wallach. But they all still want to keep the name of Mister Freeze.

They're now competing to see which one of them can truly dominate Gotham, to prove that there can only be one master of ice in this town! Batman ends up having to foil three seperate schemes from there seperate Mister Freezes, all because these criminals are being petty and trying to one up each other.

Episodes 22 and 23: Egghead is back to menace Batman! He's annoyed and deeply upset that the League of Assasins snubbed him for membership, so he's decided to finally dig his way into the Batcave, to prove his intellectual superiority over all the other supercrooks. He does actually manage to break into the Batcave, and he turns all of Batman's gadgets against him.

Batman manages to stop him before he can do too much damage, but he still ruins the set-up Batman had going. Which means that Batman needs to temporarily move all his stuff to a secondary location while the old one gets rebuilt.

Episodes 24 and 25: Batman goes to Hudson University to check on Robin while the Batcave is being fixed up, only to then discover a startling new crime taking place right under dick's nose. The new English teacher at Hudson University is really The Bookworm in disguise, hiding out at Hudson University to try and raid their prestigious libraries of all their beautiful books. He's gotten away with his ruse remarkably well, probably because he's earned a reputation as a good teacher.

But despite any good the man may have done as a teacher, Batman and Robin still need to stop his crime before he successfully carries it out! And before anyone asks about Bookworm's henchmen: they've all been masquerading as his teaching aides or as janitors or librarians or something.

Episodes 26 and 27: Batgirl comes to Hudson University as a Congresswoman to give a speech, and she winds up helping Batman and Robin deal with a new crime spree by Harley Quinn. She's set up a roller disco close to the university campus, and she's robbing the college kids of all they're worth. This episode set would wind up very much a tribute to the 70s era disco movement, as Harley Quinn and her mad discotheque have to get taken down by our terrific trio, who've been reunited once more!

Episodes 28 and 29: Batman, Robin and Batgirl are still at Hudson University, but Batgirl is admitting that she needs to get back to DC soon. And speaking of, Batman's heard tell that the Batcave is nearly all done with the remodel. But before the three of them can part ways once more, a new scheme begins to hatch in the university town. A rare north american bird statue has been robbed from right under our heroes feet, and we learn that it was The Penguin who stole it!

But it isn't just The Penguin who's involved in this mess. Oh, no. Catwoman (Eartha Kitt) is also involved. She apparently stole the statue first, but Penguin double crossed her. So now she's stalking him through the city, which means Batman, Robin and Batgirl have a real crime conundrum on their hands. Can they stop The Penguin and Catwoman in time? Or will their in-fighting tear the town apart?

Episodes 30 and 31: Batman and Robin end up stumbling upon a plot by Cluemaster to hijack the airwaves in Gotham and restart his old game show. Batman and Robin have to stop him, because he's going mad with a desire for attention and adulation.

Batman and Robin successfully manage to crash Cluemaster's show, and they send him back to jail. But in a joking scene at the finale of the episode, we see that the news is reporting on Cluemaster's crime by saying he ripped off a scheme of the Riddler's, some years prior. And that just inflames the tension between these two rogues once again.

Episodes 32 and 33: Joker and Riddler team up to issue a series of jokes and riddles to the people of Gotham City. You see, these two have realized that they're quite similar in their themes. So by pooling their knowledge, they hope to finally defeat Batman once and for all! Do their plans actually come to fruition? Definitely not, but I'm willing to bet that they come really close to victory.

Episode 34: Batman and Man-Bat end up teaming up to defeat the Getaway Genius (played by Bernie Kopell) and The Penguin (who've teamed up since last we saw them). Only through their combined skills do Batman and Man-Bat manage to bring this pair of crooks to justice.

Episodes 35 and 36: Batman gets into a really dramatic adventure this time around, as he has to help save Leslie Thompkins, a doctor he knew as a kid (operating out of Crime Alley). Turns out that a mobster named Lew Moxon is trying to kill her, to silence her the way he silenced Thomas Wayne years ago. Turns out that Joe Chill was a mere puppet of Lew Moxon, and Moxon had him killed in jail to silence him.

But Leslie Thompkins has poked her nose where it doesn't belong, and now her head is on the chopping block. So Batman has to save her, and finally confront the bitter shadows of his past. Finally, he has a chance to get revenge for his parents murder. But will he take it? Also involved with this story: Batman learns that Mr. Freeze III (Eli Wallach) was the father of Joe Chill, the petty thug who killed his parents. Mister Freeze abandoned his family when his wife was pregnant, but his name is Elias Chilton.

Episode 37: Sort of loosely tied to the previous episode (but still it's own independent thing), Batman has to try and get answers out of Mr. Freeze III (Eli Wallach) regarding his ties to the deaths of the Waynes. But Elias Chilton isn't talking. And the more Batman tries to press him for answers, the more we begin to sense a strange underbelly to Gotham Society. Lew Moxon was tied up in some kind of "Court", and Joe Chill was one of his "pawns". Elias Chilton may have been a negligent father, but he knows something's odd here. So him and batman come to an unlikely truce; both agreeing to investigate this issue on their own ends.

Episodes 38 and 39: On Christmas Eve, Gotham is menaced by yet another old menace from the past: The Calendar Man! Nobody has seen hide nor hair of him for years (mostly because he went straight years ago), but apparently being all alone and homeless on christmas made him snap and decide to commit a mad christmas and new year's themed crime wave. So Batman and Robin have to stop him, and convince him that people do care for him, and he doesn't have to go back to crime again.

Episodes 40 and 41: Christmas may be over, but apparently The Riddler didn't get the memo. He's leading a crime spree yet again, and this time it's all tied in to the themes of Christmas and New Year's. We learn that Bookworm, Riddler and Scarecrow are apparently coordinating all their plans, because Bookworm and Scarecrow are busy messing with Batgirl and Jason Bard somewhere else in town (Batgirl and Jason Bard got a Christmas break, so they came down from DC to visit Batman and Robin). That story won't be told until the next two parter, though. For now, it's all about Batman and Robin trying to beat The Riddler.

Episodes 42 and 43: Batgirl and Jason Bard have to stop Bookworm and Scarecrow from ruining New Year's Eve for everyone in Gotham. Batman and Robin have to deal with The Riddler's mad diabolical schemes; but Batgirl and Jason have to deal with Bookworm and Scarecrow. Both groups definitely have their work cut out for them.

Episodes 44 and 45: With Christmas over, Robin has recovered and left to go back to university. Now that Batman is all alone, he has to face a threat that's endemic of the new decade to come: the Black Spider. Eric Needham is a violent vigilante torturing drug dealers for what they've done to the slums and ghettos of gotham. He says Batman inspired him to go after criminals, but Batman is disgusted by the actions of this mad vigilante. So he tracks him down, and stops him before he can take the step from brutalization into murder.

It takes Batman a while to defeat the Black Spider, but when Batman does…he can't bring himself to hate the kid. He just wanted to bring better conditions to the slums of gotham, although his methods were excessive and cruel. Still, the wayne foundation pays to help eric needham get the mental help he desperately needs. Because batman isn't cruel enough to leave this kid all alone in the cold.

Episodes 46 and 47: Batman has to deal with The Joker, who's returned to bedevil Batman once more. This time, his scheme involves commiting a series of upside down crimes. This is an adaptation of a story from Batman #23, and it involves a batplane sequence (which would definitely be fun to see on screen).

Episodes 48 and 49: Now that Batman's finished dealing with Black Spider, he learns that the Black Spider was actually the pawn in another criminal's foul scheme: the Black Widow, to be more precise. Either still modelled/played by Tallulah Bankhead, or modelled after/played by Eleanor Audley (replacing a dead Tallulah Bankhead), I'm not quite sure. But I am sure that the Black Widow is back in Gotham, and this time her scheme has become even more intense than before.

She's got an army of giant mechanical spiders, and she's using them to rob gotham, hold places for ransom via web, and otherwise generally make a menace of herself. For a criminal mind this cunning, batman's skills are required. But who knows if even the caped crusader can defeat a foe as cruel and calculating as this one?

Episodes 50 and 51: Batman has to investigate a series of arsons in Gotham. Along the way, he keeps running into a strange new crook known as Firefly, a master of heat and flame. Batman isn't sure just what connection Firefly has to all these arson attacks on Gotham, but he knows there's some connection. So in this somewhat more dramatic tale of industrial espionage, we get to see Batman deal with a arsonist for hire.

But I would also keep some of the silver age firefly stuff, and i'd have his flames have different effects based on their colours. I want a colour themed villian, and i'm going to make firefly that colour themed villian, whether it's accurate or not. So yeah, we're using arson and themed rainbow effects for this story.

Episodes 52 and 53: Batman meets the Ragdoll (as played by Ray Bolger). I don't think a live action story with ragdoll could get into all the contortionism stuff, but I think it's still worth having him here. He very much feels like a character who works in a Batman '66 setting.

Episodes 54 and 55: Mister Freeze returns to Gotham and Batman has to stop him. Along the way, he meets a lady named Venus (played by Eva Gabor), who Mister Freeze has kidnapped, claiming she bears a startling resemblance to an ex-wife of his (an in-joke about George Sanders and Zsa Zsa Gabor once being married). But Venus and Batman end up teaming up, and their combined wits lead them to escape from the deadly traps of Mister Freeze's lair.

Episodes 56 and 57: Batman encounters Minerva, the criminal who ran a hypnosis based mineral spa, has been released from jail on good behaviour. But her plans for Gotham are anything but good. In jail, she used her spa to learn the secrets of all of gotham's major weaknesses. She now knows all the ways batman has defeated the different criminals in gotham, and she plans to use that knowledge to her advantage and finally have her revenge on Batman…

But thankfully, her plans all backfire. Mostly because of Venus, from the previous set of episodes. Minerva and Venus are actually sisters, and Venus vows to stop her sister at all costs. When Minerva captures Batman at the end of part one, Venus summons Robin and Batgirl to save the day!

Episodes 58 and 59: A new villian arrives in Gotham, going by the name of The Spook (which I still think sounds like some sort of ethnic slur, but which was actually a real 70s Batman villian). Claiming to be the ghost of dead prisoner Val Kaliban, the spook's powers of disappearence stump even Batman. But with the aid of The Scarecrow (possibly the only other person who could successfully combat this motif of fear), Batman successfully manages to capture and unmask Kaliban. Turns out he was never a real ghost; he was just a master escape artist who faked his own death.

Episodes 60 and 61: The beginning of the show's adaptation of Steve Englehart's comics storyline. Doctor Phosphorous and Silver St. Cloud both debut in this episode set. Although Doctor Phosphorus isn't seen again after this set of episodes, Silver St. Cloud remains relevant to the remaining few episodes in the season…

Episodes 62 and 63: An adaptation of the next part of Steve Englehart's Batman saga, starring Hugo Strange. I can't actually recap all of this saga, but we're covering the events detailed in Detective Comics #471-472, and that's about it.

Episodes 64 and 65: An adaptation of the story in Detective Comics #473 now, which allows us to see Batman and Robin working together to stop The Penguin, who's prepared yet another mad caper. And with Rupert Thorne using his influence to undermine Commissioner Gordon and Batman's affairs in Gotham, it's now unclear just what Batman and Robin can do to protect the city.

Episodes 66 and 67: For the next several episodes, there'll be a break from Steve Englehart's saga, because I plan to end the season by focusing on that. In any case, this two parter involves King Tut trying to summon an ancient mummy back from the dead, using ancient egyptian rights and rituals. His plans actually seem to work, but we learn that another criminal group is playing him for a dummy. They were using an automaton of a mummy, and they fooled him into thinking it was real.

If you're wondering about which criminal group, I can't really say. I haven't decided yet myself, so that's going to be left unclear. But it's probably either the League of Assasins or the Court of Owls. One of those groups makes the most sense to me.

Episodes 68 and 69: The Riddler starts a new crime wave, once again with the aid of The Bookworm. These two are now delivering riddles in all sorts of ways, from poems to different book titles to even having their henchmen mime out crimes without actually commiting them. Batman and Robin are left deep in the lurch by these two, and a real game of wits begins once more.

Episodes 70 and 71: An adaptation of a story in Batman #45. Again, I am beginning to really tire of writing these notes. So here's a copy and pasted description of the story from off of the DC wiki:

A famous author has recently published a book about the most evil women in history and a Hollywood studio has bought the rights to make a movie based on the book. At the same time, Catwoman escapes from prison. And when she learns that she wasn't included in the book, she decides to sabotage the film and steal from the crew and the studio. Catwoman's criminal spree is successful until she is captured and arrested by Batman and Robin.

Episodes 72 and 73: Batgirl and Jason Bard get involved in this one, as Shame and Calamity Jan crash Washington, DC. They're getting married again, and they've chosen to capture the US capital, so they can use it as their shotgun wedding Chapel. This news shakes the US to it's very core, so Batman, Robin, Batgirl and Jason Bard end up having to play the role of wedding crashers, stopping this outlaw posse from damaging the fair people of washington with their gunfights and rodeo matches.

Episodes 74 and 75: An adaptation of Detective Comics #474. It's Batman '66's introduction to Deadshot, who's still played pretty seriously (albeit not too, too violently). A skilled crook and sharpshooter, deadshot's broken out of jail to get revenge on Batman for their past encounter many years prior.

The death trap at the halfway mark for this episode might actually include a literal firing squad, since deadshot's whole motif is guns and bullets and things like that. So you know…it might end up being one of the show's more dramatic episodes.

Episodes 76 and 77: An adaptation of The Joker storyline from Detective Comics #475-476. This would be the season finale, and it would help to both resolve all the storylines of the past few issues; and yet also to set up the movie that's being built up to lead into Season Seven and help introduce Jason Todd. So a lot of important stuff happens in this episode set.

[copperbadge]

Amateur Translation Programs

So I had a lot of imaginative and informative responses to my post about looking for an amateur translation program -- something where I could load in a foreign language and it would insert a box where I could add a translation every-other-line. The idea was that this way I could practice translation with more advanced texts, and texts I chose, and thus move away from Duolingo, which at this point is good for drilling and daily practice but not for more advanced learning.

I didn't find precisely what was needed but I did get some inspiration for further explanation, and I also learned that adding the term "glossing" (thank you @thewalrus-said) into my searches helped a great deal in terms of weeding out programs that were either "Let this AI translate for you" or just endless promotional links for Babbel and Duolingo and such. I thought I'd collect up the suggestions and post them here; at the end I'm including my best swing at designing what I wanted, and why it doesn't work yet.

Suggestion one, from many people, was various ways to generate a page that is simply fixed Italian text with space underneath each line to add in a translation. This is pretty simple as a process and there are sites that will do it for you, such as this one that @ame-kage suggested. However, most of these don't allow for movement in the Italian text, and many produce a PDF which you would need to print out in order to write on unless you're willing to open it in Acrobat (and deal with Acrobat). A good solution for some but not what I'm looking for purely because I'm trying to make this super frictionless so that (knowing myself as I do) I will actually do it.

I did find this version interesting, suggested by @drivemetogeek: Have one word doc saved as your "template" doc and set the line spacing as 2.0 or higher. Select your text from source and paste it into the template doc as text-only. Ctrl a, ctrl c to select all and copy, then open a new document and "paste special" as picture. Right click and set the "wrap text" as behind text. Now you have a document where you can, basically, type over the existing text because it's the background of the page. This seems like the most frictionless version, because you could set up a bunch of them ahead of time. If you wanted to move between desktop and mobile, however, you'd need to ensure that the pasted image was fairly narrow so that you don't have to sideways-scroll.

Relatedly, people suggested generating a document that is simply the Italian text with empty space beneath it for typing in of the translation. This can be done either semi-automated, using a macro or a language like Python, or find-and-replace on, say, the stops at the ends of sentences. It basically outputs the same as above but with a more digitally accessible format, without any more effort than above. If you were to do this in Google Sheets you could also fix the column width so that it didn't do anything weird when you opened it on your phone. But it is still very friction-y, and does not allow for easy shifting of the Italian as needed. There's high probability of the translation breaking weirdly across the page. Still a top option in terms of simplicity and access.

@smokeandholograms suggested another variation illustrated here where essentially you're converting the text to a series of tables, with each paragraph a row, and an empty cell next to it for the translation. I might play around more with this one eventually, since I think I could possibly make it a three-column and put the Italian in one, the translation in the next, and the auto-translate to let me know where I might be slipping in the third. (Not that I trust auto-translate but comparing a hand translation to an auto translation can be useful in terms of working out when I've messed up the way a tense or mood is read. I tend to read indirect verbs as automatically imperative because I'm a weirdo.)

@wynjara linked to an add-in for Word specifically designed for translators, known as TransTools; this appears to employ a macro to do the same thing, though it does have a format where you can place the translation next to each sentence directly rather than in a separate cell. The full suite of tools is only $45 which is reasonable for my budget, but for what I need I think I could also just create the macro.

Using LaTeX as a tool specially designed for glossing was an option on offer, but I don't know enough about LaTeX to figure out the pros of this one, which is in itself the major con -- there's a learning curve that I think varies widely by person but for me is unfortunately a wall. It came out of a discussion on Reddit about trying to find something like what I want; also in that discussion is a link to a code generator that allows you to…do something…to the initial language, but it's not entirely clear to me (I'm sure it's clear to people who understand coding) what you would then do with it that would allow it to be output in the way I'm hoping for. Like, I could turn a paragraph of text into HTML, I understand that far, but any Italian I find is already on a website.

Moving more into apps that might work, Redditors on the LaTeX discussion suggested SIL Fieldworks, which is a professional language tech tool. Fieldworks isn't a program I'd previously encountered but much as with the ones I had, it looks like the learning curve is fairly steep and it is definitely overkill generally for what I need, though it might also harbor within it the thing I want. It is free, so I may download and play around with it.

@brightwanderer suggested using note-taking or "whiteboard" apps such as Freeform or Nebo; these are generally a kind of "infinite canvas" in which you can drop objects, text boxes, or handwriting. I don't know that Freeform would be measurably different to just using Word and a macro, since I'd still have to input/format all the text and then be stuck with the same "fixed text" setup -- and it's also iOS only -- but for some folks it might be more helpful. Nebo is a similar infinite-canvas with unfortunately the same issues, though on the plus it's available for Android, which is where most of my mobile property resides.

@bloodbright suggested that I was looking for a CAT tool, a professional translation tool mainly used by translators working in the field. This was a concept I'd encountered, but I hadn't found a good starting place. They suggested Smartcat and OmegaT. Smartcat bills itself as an AI translation platform and is HARD pushing the "don't translate it yourself, hire a translator or let AI do it" angle, so it's difficult to tell what it offers in terms of actual tools for translators, and it's also cagey about pricing, so I can't really evaluate it. OmegaT is free and gives off big "some weirdo homebrewed this in their basement" vibe (which I am here for) but I also recognized it from screengrabs that were the reason I veered away from professional-grade software: it looked too complex. Realistically, the major downside of OmegaT is that I don't think I can put it on my phone. One thing I did find interesting is that once you translate a portion of the text, the original language goes away, though I assume you can turn that off if needed. I do kind of like that because it means my distractable brain is looking at Less Stuff.

So where did I end up?

Well, it looked like I was going to have to try a homebrew myself. I had the idea of trying some of the initial suggestions but in reverse -- designing a document where every other line was a single-cell table fixed to the page. You could paste in the Italian, which would wrap around the cells, and then enter the English in the cells.

You can fix a table in place in Google Docs -- you click on the table, then under Table > Style select Wrap Text, Both Sides, and Fix On Page. Getting the whole page set up is a little labor intensive but once you did that, you could just save it as a template and make a duplicate of it each time. And this actually works….on desktop.

Unfortunately, if you open it in the mobile Docs app, the app can't handle the fixed tables and automatically moves them all to after the text that's been pasted in. I tried redesigning it so that it's a table within a table -- one for the Italian, then within that a series of them for the English -- but when you nest a table in Google Docs, it doesn't let you fix the second table in place. And you are also still dealing with the wrap issue, although you can resize the page and add a large right-hand margin as a kludge of a fix for that.

You can build this same kind of document in Word, so I tried building one in Word and then uploading it to Drive, but when you open the Word file in Docs (or in Microsoft Word for Android), it still strips the fixed positioning -- there's just some functionality missing from both apps that doesn't allow them to handle fixed-position tables.

So, the design is sound, just not the final execution. If I could program an app, I could probably remedy the issues with it -- it's simply a series of text boxes nested inside one another with different formatting. I would imagine that's relatively basic to set up, although given that neither Docs nor Word can handle fixed tables in mobile, perhaps I've stumbled on a much bigger problem that everyone is ignoring because nobody actually needs or wants fixed tables in mobile. :D

Experimentation is ongoing, anyway. I might simply have to resign myself to the fact that my translation study is going to have to be in front of a computer, which might be for the best anyway when I inevitably want to compare my translation to an auto-translate to see where I might have read something wrong.

[cornyonmains]

I finally got around to watching X-Men '97. It was better than it had any business being, and I'm just so disoriented.

Episode one. Almost immediately you know they've got someone on the deck who knows how to hide gay shit, because one of the first things you see is Gambit in a crop top.

So, Charles is MIA, but he put Magneto in charge. He rolls up on the mansion looking like a whole-ass Herbal Essences commercial. Him, Rogue, and Gambit spend most of the season in horny jail, and I'm just sayin' Krakoa can have more than one threesome but I digress.

Morph is thirsting hard for Logan. There's a brief scene where they're going to troll him in the shower that looks like something I read on Joe Phillips' website in 2003.

Scott Summers has finally gotten his day. He's still so tightly wound you could use him to launch a cotton ball through Wolverine's skull, but you finally get to see him be as good as he is in the comics. They had him ice skating around with his beams, doing figure eights before he ass blasted sentinels into next week. Bishop was there, he ass blasted them back to the current week to avoid a paradox.

There's a scene where Scott tells Logan not to break Jean's heart. We all know what's going to happen on Krakoa. I did not miss that shit.

Where's Storm you ask? In horny jail with Forge. In the desert. Fighting demons and horseback riding. Jubilee? Locking down a sugar daddy and finally having her powers developed.

And all this isn't even going over the plot, which is genuinely good, and deals with heavy subject matter such as discrimination and genocide in heavy tones that don't condescend, instead of that after school special kind of tone cartoons that aren't specifically geared towards adults often have. The kids watching are going to hate the villains passionately instead of just finding themselves waiting for the X-Men to save the day.

Did I mention Magneto's fabulous hair yet? It looks like what would have happened of Fabio had believed it wasn't butter. Or if Farrah Fawcett found that flower from Tangled. He looks like he's having the kind of sex you read about in dogeared copies of Lost Souls during your teenie goth phase.

I wish I knew how to take things seriously enough to give this show the review it actually deserves, but I'd get two paragraphs in and decide I want to play Scribblenauts instead. Anyways, my point is, watch the show.

[pedrocomicreviews]

Immortal Thor #22

"Hah! Say it again, my liege!"

Part of me wants to ask you to flip a coin every paragraph.

Structure gimmicks are difficult to pull off. Choose Your Own Adventure used to be its own genre of book, because you have to write and print everything in very particular ways so that it makes sense from a variety of perspectives. Editing a book that requires you to go back and forth all the time is less looking for typos and more QA testing it, like a game-- because it basically becomes one. Can the reader break the story through a specific yet possible path? Is it likely a reader will reach an intended ending before they grow bored of it? Is it still a compelling book no matter how you read it?

So, the GOAT Al Ewing has three books out this week-- this, All-New Venom and Absolute Green Lantern. The Venom review is on the Lightning Round and the Green Lantern one is already up, but I want to appreciate for a second how vastly different they are, and, jokes aside about Paul Rabin, how well-thought out and effective they get to be in their own terms. To work on these many scripts in such disparaging fictional genres takes a lot of work, and even if one or two experiments didn't work over the course of these runs, this one definitely did.

What I am trying to say is that I really loved the idea of flipping a coin every page to advance or rewind the book, which is how this adventure is structured. Every page has been written in such a way that it can come both after the last panel of the page before it, or as a result of you coming back from the page after it. In fact, a lot of the dialogue works better backwards than forwards, which you will only experience if you take the comic's idea at face value.

An unspoken truth of reading comics is that we kinda want to get through them fast. There are nearly thirty new comics out this week by Marvel and DC combined, not counting digitally, and it's a hobby with a lot of time investment attached to it. When a comic asks for more attention and more time out of you than others, it's banking on the assumption that you will take its suggestions and substance in good faith, and give it a chance you cannot give to every comic. If every single comic book I read this week was this complicated to get through, I wouldn't be writing this review; I would still be getting through most of the comics I actually read.

So to see it well-executed in a very simple way (some of these ideas are complex and I am dumb) that makes the story read better, and puts you in the character's heads, and makes dialogue make more sense a second, third time you read it? To catch all the sly jokes about the repeating nature of the labyrinth, and to see visual details that only make sense when you see what's up ahead and got Tails five times in a row and went back to the beginning? That's really special, that's really difficult to pull off.

Immortal Thor has been through a lot and at some point I lost interest in it, but this genuinely renewed my love for the book. Everyone sounds great, it's unique and fun to read, the villain is excellent, the ideas behind it shine; it's back to being the book I loved 20 or so issues ago when we were first dealing with Utgard-Thor. I am very happy with this and I'm looking forward to seeing where it goes.

We're over the halfway point if this is trying to get to 50 issues, and I am back to wondering if this will carve its way into being one of the greatest Thor runs of all time.

[infinitify]

Hey!

So I was reading back on a few chapters and came across this bit in chapter 17,

'other times he’d be flushed and dishevelled, his lip would be bleeding, or his shirt would be torn. And still, he had money for Kenny.'

I was just wondering what exactly this was implying as I don't really recall any moments in the fanfic where it hinted to levi dealing with something like this in his past. Would you care to elaborate a little on this for me please?😭

hi there!

this is actually in reference to what levi was doing to help support himself, his mother, and mikasa for a little while.

i'm going to try to keep this short, but you guys know by now that i can't ever do that 😬 so forgive me in advance.

to answer your question, i have to shed some more light on kenny. in the recent chapters, mikasa shows some sort of understanding as to why their uncle was in prison - "Our uncle was the one who got busted, he was the one breaking federal law." he was a career criminal alongside a bar owner (think of it as a front to cover for his crimes), and his past actually intertwines into multiple facets of the story, some of which haven't been delved into yet. i'm talking gang affiliations, illegal arms dealing, drug trade, etc. kenny ackerman is one big goddamn driving force for a lot of the events that take place in paradis falls and the lives of the people in it, but alas, that's something you'll just have to see in the future. kenny's currently in prison for illegally trading firearms, and levi has been out of his life for a very long time. but like any GREAT uncle would, kenny used levi's need for refuge to his advantage back when he fled kuchel's trailer. levi uses some of the crimes he was aware of his uncle doing to help fabricate that big scary story to armin, like selling guns and implying he killed people who "got in his way," but the truth is, the worst levi had ever done was sell drugs for his uncle.

in a flashback in chapter 15, levi says this to grisha:

"You wanna know what I’ve done to solve it? Fine. Listen. I’ve got two jobs just so we can keep that stupid fucking trailer, and when that’s not enough, I have to push drugs for my uncle.” ... “Yeah. You heard me. I have to fight my way out of getting killed every night because there’s always a problem. Always some junkie demanding more, or cheaper, or fucking stronger.”

both before and during his living with kenny, levi was dealing drugs, taking the money back to his uncle, and receiving a cut of it so as to both provide for mikasa, and later "earn his keep" in kenny's home. that part of the chapter you're talking about is mikasa's recollection of only what she saw as a young girl, so it's written quite vaguely because she wouldn't have complete and total knowledge of what was going on between levi and their uncle. but the reality of it is that kenny put his nephew in danger by sending him out onto the streets to deal with addicts, some of these interactions ended with levi getting into fights and having to protect himself, which is what he mentions to grisha.

here's the full paragraph of what you're referencing:

"All she could remember was his sacrifices, how determined he was to take care of her, but… how deep did it all go? There were times where he came into wads of cash, especially in those early days of living with Kenny where a couple times a week, she could find them talking quietly in his bedroom. Levi would disappear for an hour or two, sometimes returning with money that he forked over to Kenny, other times he’d be flushed and dishevelled, his lip would be bleeding, or his shirt would be torn. And still, he had money for Kenny."

mikasa doesn't know what exactly he had done for kenny (and herself) growing up, only that it wasn't legal. so that's why she has a hard time discrediting the narrative levi fed armin - she knows he was only saying those things to scare him, but also knows there was some truth to what he said and that somehow, in the legal system, there just might be something there that is truly putting his guardianship of her in jeopardy. all she doesn't know is what petra REALLY is to levi, so she's bought into the narrative and wants to figure out what's going on.

i hope this helps clear it up for you! if you're still confused, let me know x

[archon-maenad]

oh my goddddd I am so so so not normal about the concept of the endbringer truce, even more than I am about kill orders (and I am very not normal about government licensed assassinations).

the endbringer truce was ratified. and cauldron was obviously responsible for it crossing from cultural phenomenon to an actual set of laws, but to push that in the first place they had to make sure the concept was deeply important. and it is, it's become a cornerstone of both caping and just being a citizen of earth bet.

that leads to a lot of different ways to look at the concept. there's the cynical outlook, the bitterness the ordinary citizen feels when villains get away with running roughshod over them just because they show up to endbringer fights. heroes have their own flavor of this too, because there's a very real sacrifice of morals that comes from working with a nazi. even if people agree the ends justify the means here that doesn't mean those means don't cost you something. no hero on bet has clean hands, and they know it.

then there's the emotional outlook, where all the feels congeal. I'm such a sucker for humanity banding together, even in the face of hopeless odds, and the endbringer truce makes me tear up when written right. a week from now they'll be at each other's throats but in the moment, with levi or behee or simmy looming above, with the wreckage created surrounding the aftermath, villains and heroes work together. it's beautiful.

and then there's maybe my favorite aspect, the comparative outlook. how starkly the differences in mindset are between earth bet citizens and those of other worlds enchants me. that society has normalized setting aside grudges for the sake of survival in a way that most people can't, because the emotional hurdle is too much to pass even if they get the logic, and stories where that shows are just the best.

I read a post-gm isekai fic where taylor's gambit to rally a group of people against a bigger enemy failed, and that moment stuck with me because she specifically noted that it failed since she assumed the world would have responded like bet would have, and that even baseline humans from her home dimension would have understood the plan. and y'know what they fucking would have. because everyone agrees you Don't Fuck With The Truce.

having to actually explain first why the truce is important just did not occur to her, the argument was focused on why the enemy was obviously truce-worthy. but tay listed out the core concepts and people Did Not Get It and that was such a wild bit of culture shock from her perspective. being too cowardly or morally uptight or selfish to put aside grudges so you can survive gets culled real quickly on bet, but in that new world it was the norm.

it also let to a hilarious moment where she stone cold maimed (or maybe straight up bodied I don't remember) a guy who broke truce and to her surprise people were absolutely horrified. for once tay was not actually trying to deal psychic damage and someone sane could agree that everyone else is overreacting, because maiming or killing people who break truce when birdcages or life sentences aren't available is a completely reasonable response on bet!

I love exploring culture shock and reactions to it in the context of earth bet citizens on other worlds, and the endbringer truce is one of my favorite avenues to do so. it's status as a cornerstone of that society led to a fundamental shift in mindset that truly I am very very very not normal about as evidenced by this nine paragraph post about it.